


Red In Tooth and Claw

by glasslogic



Series: The Cause Sanguine [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasslogic/pseuds/glasslogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is a hunter and Sam is sort of a werewolf, but they are determined to stick together and overcome the challenges of the path they have chosen. Their latest problem is the recovery of a cursed mirror from the estate of a deceased hunter. The mirror’s curse doesn't bother Sam, but it stirs up old doubts for Dean as he is reminded that the only thing harder than facing the monsters, is facing yourself. This story is a sequel to The Cause Sanguine, it was written for the 2011 spnslash Big Bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red In Tooth and Claw

  


  


“We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams...”   
                                                 ~Arthur O’Shaughne

** Prologue **

  
Dean sprawled on the meadow grass, lazy, content and at peace with the world. A deep pond rippled in the warm breeze just a few yards away and the sky stretched endlessly up like a dream of summer blue. He was comfortable in his favorite jeans, the t-shirt Sam kept stealing from him and boots he had finally broken in _just right_.  
  
That the boots had been worn out and junked more than five years ago didn’t matter.  
  
Movement caught his attention and he turned his head to look at the wolf he was sharing his meadow with. Sam was stretched out on his side, back to Dean and neck craned to sniff at a dragonfly that was trying to settle onto the grass near his head. It would alight, then take off again -- disturbed by the change in air current. Sam wasn’t serious about it, though; interested enough to sniff, not interested enough to move. Eventually, the dragonfly grew tired of the game and left to find a less inhabited patch of grass. Dean smiled and scooted closer so he could bury his face in the sun-warmed fur and inhaled deeply. The wolf smelled like it always did, a familiar mix of musty animal warmth and a clean wildness, with a unique twist that was simply _Sam_. Even in his human form, Sam kept that singular note.  
  
Dean settled onto his back again. A hand slid over his stomach and he opened his eyes to the darkness of the motel room, suddenly awake in the cold night. Sam was human. Always human now; he’d given up his other form permanently almost a year ago when he had chosen to leave his people and follow Dean on the road. But even after all of these months of sharing a life, in the canvas of his dreams, Sam’s form was as liquid as his smile or his laugh.  
  
Enough light from the parking lot street lamps was seeping through the curtains that Dean could make out Sam sprawled beside him on the bed. He was on his stomach and had one arm thrown across Dean’s waist. Sam’s skin was cool to touch, so Dean fumbled for the comforter that had been kicked aside in their sleep. When he dragged it up and glanced over, he could see the glitter of Sam’s eyes.  
  
“Come back t’sleep,” the wolf mumbled. “S’warmer there. There’s buzzy things...” He sighed heavily and his eyes slid shut, breathing evening almost immediately back into the rhythm of deep sleep.  
  
Dean blinked at him, feeling suddenly a lot more awake. “Sam?”  
  
But Sam’s breathing remained steady and he showed no signs of waking again. With his own dream still heavy in his mind, Dean thought about shaking Sam a little and asking what he had been talking about. But after a few moments, Dean himself was on the verge of sleep again, and it seemed silly. It wasn’t worth waking Sam up and interrupting his much-needed rest to ask him about something he had mumbled while probably not even awake.  
  
It was just a coincidence.

  
  
**Chapter One**

“The only real people are the people who never existed”  
                                                         ~Oscar Wilde

  
“I want to stop by Lawrence,” Sam announced.  
  
Dean scowled and dragged another French fry through the ketchup. “No.”  
  
Sam tapped one finger on the road map he had been examining since he finished inhaling his own food. “It’s on the way; why not?’  
  
“You’ve wanted to stop by every national park, state park and _dog park_ for the last thousand miles and I haven’t said a damn thing about it. I don’t want to go to Lawrence.” Feeling the weight of Sam’s gaze on him Dean added in a mutter, “It’s not even on the way.”  
  
Sam kicked him none-too-gently under the table until Dean looked up in annoyance, then he slid the road map across the table. “We’re already traveling from Salina to St. Charles. Lawrence isn’t even a mile out of our way. We’ve gone further than that looking for coffee.” Sam’s eyes narrowed. “And other than that stakeout we did three months ago in San Juan for two nights, we haven’t so much as slowed down by a tree. Don’t bitch at me for suggesting we could crash at a campsite as easily as in the roach motels you find whenever you can’t prop your eyelids open anymore.”  
  
Dean stifled a twinge of guilt. Sam had adjusted to life on the road better than Dean could have expected. But it was still a big change after spending more than twenty years running free in the deep forests of Montana. Dean had been promising for the last three months that they could take at least a week for themselves and go camping, but the cases kept coming in and there was always just one more thing to look into before they took a break.  
  
But all he said was, “They’re not roach motels.” _Usually_.  
  
Sam snorted his opinion of that.  
  
“Look,” Dean tried to reason, “I’m tired, _you’re_ tired, and if we push straight through we can reach St. Charles by midnight. We salt some bones, catch some sleep, then move on to see what Pastor Jim has for us. If we’re _extremely_ lucky, all he really wants is some company for dinner and we might pull some real downtime after that.”  
  
“For camping.” Sam didn’t even try to hide the skepticism in his voice, which was probably a little deserved.  
  
“For whatever wolfy things you want to do.”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “We can spend the night in Lawrence, get some actual sleep there, do the salt and burn the next night, _then_ go see what Pastor Jim wants. It won’t make a big difference either way.”  
  
“Not unless the ghost in St. Charles tries to kill someone else in the next twenty-four hours!” Dean snapped.  
  
“In the forty years people have been seeing him, this is the _first_ time anyone has reported any violence! Don’t you think it’s more likely the woman just tripped?”  
  
“Hey,” Dean tossed his napkin over his plate and leaned back, “she saw the ghost, then got shoved into traffic. You want to wait until there’s an actual death?”  
  
“It was probably trying to warn her to watch her step.” Sam retorted. “Either way, Lawrence is on the way and I want to stop. An hour won’t kill us. Or anyone else,” he added pointedly, before Dean could object again.  
  
“Why are you so obsessed with going there?!”  
  
Sam grinned, detecting victory. “I want to see where you grew up. You saw where I grew up; it’s only fair.”  
  
“You grew up in the _woods_ , Sam, and I only saw it because we were running for our lives, remember?” _Dean_ certainly didn’t have any trouble remembering. Being nearly killed by summoned African spirits alone was memorable, but following up the Tikoloshe attack by having sex with a werewolf, a siege by the cops, then almost freezing to death in the mountains while fleeing for his life had really made that period of time special. “Besides, I didn’t grow up in Lawrence, I barely remember the place. It’s just another spot on the map.”  
  
“Then stopping isn’t a problem,” Sam announced with satisfaction.  
  
Dean groaned and signaled for the check.

~~~~~~~

For a kid who was raised on the road, Dean had spent a surprising amount of time in the town where he was born and his mother had died. His father still had friends and contacts there, and it was a convenient enough place to crash for free when they were in that end of Kansas. John used to take Dean for walks in neighborhoods that Dean barely remembered while telling stories of Mary and their lives before. But as years passed and John was drawn deeper and deeper into the shadows of a hunter’s life, the aimless reminiscing slowed until Dean looked around one day and realized that he couldn’t remember the last time his father had mentioned his mother at all. But John still visited Lawrence, at least once a year.  
  
Dean was fourteen before he realized it was the anniversary of her death.  
  
Mary’s murder was the whip that drove John, but it was hero worship for his dad that had carried Dean down the same road. It was a hard job, and there wasn’t anyone thanking them for it, but Dean believed in what they did. Every life he saved was all the validation he needed and Dean couldn’t think of a single thing he really felt he was missing out on with his unconventional lifestyle, until his father died on a case and Dean’s life collapsed around him. Then came the long haze of drinking and self-destruction until he finally washed up in Montana and met Sam. That relationship had suffered its own complications and issues, not least of which was Sam being furry twenty-seven days of the month, but things had eventually worked out.  
  
Life since then had been better, complete in a way it had never felt before. The job was still rough, the thanks were still few, and the money was almost nonexistent, but he was still saving lives and he wasn’t doing it alone. Sam had his back, promised he would _always_ have his back, and Dean believed him. Believed him because he couldn’t look into Sam’s eyes when he said so and do anything else, not when he knew how much Sam had given up, and how long he had waited for Dean in the first place.  
  
But sometimes Dean wasn’t so sure of himself, and those vague, unsettled thoughts had kept him away from Lawrence since his father’s death, almost four years ago.

  
  
**Chapter Two**

To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.  
                                                                                 ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

  
“So, this is it then?”  
  
Dean gave Sam a sour look and stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets. Lawrence was as Lawrence had always been. There was nothing to distinguish the house they stood in front of from its neighbors. Neatly trimmed bushes, car in the driveway, paint, shutters; just like all of the others down the long, shady lane. Nothing in its appearance that spoke of the flames that had consumed his parents lives and burned away any chance he had of a normal life before he was even old enough to understand what was being destroyed.  
  
“This is it.”  
  
Sam was quiet then. Dean watched the expression of intense concentration on Sam’s face while he gazed at the property. There was nothing in the house in front of them that spoke to Dean, and he wondered what it was that Sam found so fascinating.  
  
“I’m going for a walk,” Dean announced after a few minutes.  
  
Sam broke away from the object of his interest and looked at Dean with the same sort of intensity he’d used to examine the house.  
  
Dean met his gaze squarely. “Not far. I’ll meet you back at that restaurant across the street from where we left the car.”  
  
Sam had wanted to stretch his legs and see some of the town, and it was only a few blocks over, so Dean had agreed and they had left the car in the town center. Dean had another motive for wanting to be on foot, but it depended on how much space Sam would give him.  
  
The wolf was still studying his face.  
  
“I can walk with you,” he finally offered. Dean shook his head.  
  
“I just need a few minutes. And I wouldn’t want to cut into your quality time here,” Dean added wryly, with another quick glance at the house.  
  
Sam nodded slowly. “Okay. Half an hour?”  
  
“See you there.”

~~~~~~~

The unseasonable chill was sinking into Dean’s bones and he was starting to think about heading over to meet Sam, when warm fingers slid into his own and squeezed. Dean started at the touch, but then squeezed back and let go. Sam made little noise when he moved, and Dean was starting to get used to the constant ambushes. That wasn’t really a healthy thing to be comfortable with in his line of work, but other than tying a bell around Sam’s neck, Dean was at a loss for a solution to the problem.  
  
“I thought you were waiting at the restaurant?”  
  
“I did. Then I gave you another half hour just to be nice.” But Sam didn’t sound upset.  
  
Dean flexed muscles grown stiff from the length of time he had been standing still. “Sorry. How’d you find me?”  
  
“I followed my nose. Do you want me to go back and wait for you?”  
  
“No,” Dean shook his head. “I’m done here.”  
  
The headstones were simple and side by side. Just the names and the dates of birth and death. Dean’s uncle had put up the one for Mary in the chaos following her death, and Bobby had arranged for John’s marker and burial. Dean’s sole contribution had been his insistence that his father be buried in Kansas beside his wife; he hadn’t been interested in the details.  
  
It had been weird, the gradual distance John had put between them. They had worked jobs together from Dean’s early teenage years when his dad finally trusted his skills enough to bring him into the field, all the way into his twenties. There had been the odd clean-up or minor incident they had investigated separately, and Dean had always known there were some things his dad kept close to the vest. Sometimes, John had just dropped off the map for a few weeks before banging on the door and picking up as if he had never left. But that last year had been different.  
  
It had started with an accident. Dean, blinded by exhaustion, never saw the second wraith, an oversight that planted John in the hospital for five days before he was well enough to be smuggled out. A long convalescence and then... distance. There had been other mistakes in the years they worked together; you couldn’t do the job they did and never make a mistake. John had more than one scar on him from miscalculations in the field, and Dean certainly had his own share too. But it seemed different that time. In the aftermath, there were more jobs John wanted to do alone, more errands he sent Dean off on. And then the last one, when he took on a haunting no sane person should have tried to handle by themselves. Dean was left with the conclusion that either his dad had been suicidal, or thought it was an even greater risk to take Dean with him. Like that one mistake had highlighted something in Dean that John couldn’t stomach. Something that Dean had dwelled on through restless nights while John took solo jobs that they would have worked together even two months before.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
Dean nodded and bumped his shoulder against Sam’s as he turned towards the cemetery gate. “I’m hungry. Did the place look like it had good food?”  
  
“There’s no rush; if you want to stay here longer--”  
  
Dean cut him off with a headshake. “There’s nothing here; it just seemed like something I should do.”  
  
They left the graveyard and headed back towards the center of town. A few blocks passed in companionable silence before Dean spoke up abruptly. “I can’t believe we’ve been together this long and I’ve never even asked about your folks. You know all about mine.”  
  
Sam shrugged. “Not that much to ask about. They were fine when I left.”  
  
“Do you call them and check in sometimes? I haven’t notic--”  
  
“Dean, we don’t have families like you humans do.”  
  
“I think that’s _us_ humans now,” Dean said pointedly.  
  
“Only on the outside,” Sam replied in a tone of such great satisfaction that it actually caused the edge of Dean’s lip to quirk in amusement, though he didn’t rise to the bait. “We have the pack instead of your tight family groups. Once a puppy no longer needs constant care, they become the responsibility of all of the adults. By the time you're grown, your birth parents aren’t any more significant in your life than the other adults who helped raise you. I love my people, but I’m closer to some of my cousins and other wolves than I am to either of what you would call my parents.”  
  
Dean thought that over. “That’s just... _weird_.”  
  
“Right,” Sam snorted. “At least I grew up embraced by my society. Your people would have taken you away from your dad for child abuse if they had known how you were living.”  
  
Dean shrugged, not denying it. “So what about siblings?”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
“Sam!”  
  
“What?” The wolf gave Dean a look of total innocence. Dean grumbled something and pulled open the door of the restaurant. They were seated and the waitress had brought them water and menus before Dean spoke up again.  
  
“How would you like to _walk_ to St. Charles?”  
  
“You’d come back and get me and you know it.”  
  
“I can’t imagine why.”  
  
Sam waited until Dean took a sip of water, then leaned in and lowered his voice. “For all of those hard to reach places you can’t lick yourself.”  
  
He slid out of the booth and escaped to the restroom as Dean choked on his water and fended off the attentions of the concerned waitress.

~~~~~~~

Dean had the first nightmare that night.  
  
The stench of dry rot and heavy, warm air pressed against his skin while the echoing boom of close lightning competed with the creak and groan of ancient stairs. He was standing in the ruin of what had once been a grand foyer. Elaborate tile work could still be seen in the cracked remains underneath decades of accumulated filth. A battery-powered lantern sat on the dusty edge of an old sideboard, and another one was raised in the hand of the man climbing the steps.  
  
“Dad?”  
  
But John didn’t hear him. Part of Dean drank in the sight of his father on the staircase, even if it wasn’t real, but the rest of him was screaming in panic. He didn’t want to be here, and he didn’t want his _father_ to be here. There. Wherever. The screaming swirl of emotions was threatening to drown Dean in a wash of guilt and grief. He clenched his eyes shut, willing himself awake as John took another step, but his eyes flew open again at the thunderous crash of the chandelier hitting the tile only feet away.  
  
The shards from the shattering glass passed straight through Dean, and he looked up wildly to find his dad staring grimly down at the wreckage on the foyer floor. A faint mist was gathering in front of him and Dean opened his mouth to scream a warning, knowing what was about to happen, powerless to stop it. But even if his dad could have heard him, it would’ve been too late. Supernatural force slammed into John, throwing him through the decaying wood of the railing and far out onto the broken floor to land in the glittering glass.  
  
Dean ran to him and fell heavily onto his knees in the spreading pool of blood. He grabbed hold of the limp figure and rolled him onto his back, but it wasn’t John any longer; it was Sam, and the flat stare in the empty hazel eyes made Dean suck in his breath in horror.  
  
Stinging pain on his face made him raise his arm defensively and he opened his eyes to dim light and the ceiling of the motel room he remembered falling asleep in. Sam was sitting beside him on the bed, eyes that were very much alive filled with concern.  
  
“Did you hit me?” Dean asked muzzily.  
  
“You were having a nightmare; you wouldn’t wake up.”  
  
Red numbers on the clock told Dean he had been asleep for hours and dawn was fast approaching. It was time for them to get on the road, but he felt even more exhausted than he had when he laid down.  
  
“Did you get any sleep?” he asked Sam, still trying to gather his scattered thoughts.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Do you want me to drive?”  
  
Dean managed a sleepy glare and reached down to fumble on the floor for his pants and car keys, wanting them secure in his grip before Sam decided to act on any bright ideas.  
  
“No thanks. When I want to end up in traction, I can crash the car myself.”

~~~~~~~

The St. Charles salt-and-burn was routine enough, but Pastor Jim had a nest of hobgoblins the next town over that needed to be cleaned out. Fixing that mess was an insane two week period during which Dean was reminded that being trapped on two feet hadn’t done anything to dim Sam’s enjoyment of a good chase, that and he absolutely _hated_ goblins.  
  
Then there was a string of suspicious deaths out in California, a cursed ring in Milwaukee, witches in the Bayou, and the jobs just kept rolling in. Usually, there was some downtime between jobs while he scouted out the next one, but not this time. Dean couldn’t remember ever getting so many calls for help on top of each other. He couldn’t turn his back when lives were at stake, his dad had raised him better than that. Maybe... maybe if Sam had asked, but the werewolf was always right there with him, not even a half-step behind.  
  
Weeks later, sudden, blinding pain in his chest ripped Dean out of what had become the familiar nightmare of being trapped in the ancient house watching death steal the light from Sam’s eyes.  
  
The bedside lamp was on and Sam was stretched out on the rumpled sheets beside him. He was watching Dean solemnly, chin resting on crossed arms, one leg kicking idly against the mattress. His posture was so reminiscent of his fur form that for an instant, Dean felt a profound sense of loss. He loved Sam, and would take him in his human form any day over the cycles he had shifted in before, but there was a quiet sort of companionship Dean had shared with the wolf during endless weeks spent together in Montana that eluded their relationship now. Dean knew it was probably just an issue of perception, and his problem at that, but the loss was still there.  
  
Fortunately, the agony in his chest was very distracting.  
  
“Did you just... _pinch my nipple_?” Dean demanded furiously, rubbing at it.  
  
“You were having another nightmare,” Sam said reasonably, eyes much more serious than tone.  
  
“Where I come from, we usually just give people a gentle shake, you know? Not a good _nipple pinch_.”  
  
“Where I come from, we shake with our teeth. Do you really want to go there?”  
  
Dean turned his back to the wolf, swinging legs to the floor and sitting hunched on the edge of the bed, rubbing at his eyes. He didn’t want Sam to see the echoes of futile anger and debilitating grief in his expression. This time, the dream had been unusually bad, and he was grateful to be awake. Not so grateful for the pain in his nipple, but not sure it wasn’t a good trade.  
  
The dreams were screwing him up. It had occurred to him some time ago that maybe the dream was a warning, some kind of sign that Sam would die like his dad. And for the same reason, that there was something in Dean that had caused his father to push his son away rather than let Dean watch his back. Something that would get Sam killed too.  
  
“We need to talk about this, Dean,” Sam spoke from behind him.  
  
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Dean mumbled.  
  
“You want me to pinch the other one too?” Sam demanded. “I’m not stupid. It’s almost every single night now. If you talk to me about it, maybe I can help!”  
  
“I said I was fine, Sam! It’s just stress and exhaustion.”  
  
Sam growled, a low, unhappy rumble that wasn’t usually directed at Dean.  
  
Dean half turned so he could glare at him. “I’m _fine_!”  
  
A trick of light made the bright hazel of Sam’s answering glare seem unusually... flat, an echo of his dream.  
  
Dean swallowed hard and shoved the thought away. He told himself that it was stupid, that he was tired and moody and he needed to just _forget about it_ before he drove himself mad. But lack of sleep, stress and the relentless pressure of the dreams worked together, and the idea in the back of Dean’s mind, that he had some kind of internal flaw that killed people he loved, slowly took hold.

  
  
**Chapter Three**

"When my time comes, just skin me and put me up there  
on Trigger, just as though nothing had ever changed."  
                                                                ~Roy Rogers

  
Bobby walked back into the kitchen and hung the phone up. “Well,” he said heavily, turning to face Sam and Dean who were sitting at his table, “Roy Rogers is dead.”  
  
Dean groaned, recognizing the lead-in for a job and not having any interest in it.  
  
“Bobby, we haven’t even been here for an hour yet and I am too damn tired for cryptic announcements. I thought Roy Rogers was dead, like, a zillion years ago. So if he managed to crawl out of his grave and died again -- great! More time to sleep for me. And Sam,” he added, eyeing the dark circles under Sam’s eyes.  
  
“Who’s Roy Rogers?” Sam asked absently, barely looking up from the newspaper section he was reading.  
  
Bobby rolled his eyes and walked over to start dishing out the food he had abandoned on the stove when the phone rang. “Roy Rogers the _actor_ has been dead about a decade. Roy Rogers, Mick Rogers’ thirty-something son, has been dead about eight hours. Car accident.”  
  
Sam folded the paper and gave Dean an interested look. “Did you like the actor?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “He was okay. Can’t be too picky about what’s on when the cheap-ass motel T.V. only gets two channels.”  
  
“You two ladies want to do your film critique later?” Bobby snapped. “I’ve got real problems to deal with.” He plunked a plate of breakfast onto the table in front of Dean to emphasize his point.  
  
“I don’t even know who Mick Rogers was, Bobby! And if _I_ don’t, _Sam_ sure as hell doesn’t. Why do we give a damn about his kid?”  
  
Bobby placed a plate of eggs and toast in front of Sam before grabbing his own off the counter and taking a seat. The bright morning sunlight streaming through his kitchen window was a cheerful counterpoint to the unshaven and rough-looking appearance of his guests. Sam and Dean had rolled into the junkyard about twenty minutes after sunrise. Bobby had insisted they eat before they passed out for a few hours, but the shrill ring of one of the wall phones had delayed breakfast a bit.  
  
“ _We_ care,” Bobby stressed, “because Mick Rogers was a damn fine hunter, and he amassed quite the collection of _unusual_ items during his career. Unusual in a way that would be unhealthy to have out in the general population.”  
  
“Why didn’t he destroy them?” Sam moved his toast to Dean’s plate and reached for the salt.  
  
“Some things don’t destroy so easy,” Bobby replied ominously. “Most of what he had is fairly benign: herbs, homemade charms, crap like that. It might raise a few eyebrows, but it won’t cause much trouble. Mick kept a lot of his serious stuff in a storage locker that Roy inherited when his old man passed. Local hunters cleared that out as soon as they heard about the accident. But Mick kept one item in his house that _has_ to be moved, in a ‘sooner is better’ sort of sense. Roy didn’t have a wife or any kids, and the jackass also didn’t have a will. So we have until the courts track down someone to hand his things to, but no telling how long that will take or where everything when go when it happens. This needs to be dealt with now.”  
  
Dean looked suspicious. “What _piece_ is this _exactly_ , Bobby?”  
  
“The Mirror of Leanne.”  
  
“That thing is _real_?”  
  
“Real enough to have a body count in the triple digits attached to it.”  
  
Sam cut an apple into neat quarters. “Someone want to fill me in?”  
  
Dean picked up his own fork and glanced at Bobby expectantly.  
  
“Supposedly, Leanne was a witch back in the seventeen hundreds who had a score to settle with a man who jilted her.”  
  
“Guy sounds like a real bright light,” Dean mumbled around a mouthful of eggs.  
  
Bobby narrowed his eyes at him. “Didn’t your daddy teach you not to talk with your mouth full?”  
  
Dean shrugged but stayed quiet, concentrating on his food.  
  
Sam frowned. “I don’t know that word, ‘jilted.’”  
  
“It means he left her at the altar,” Bobby explained. “Agreed to marry her then backed out at the last minute.” He continued when Sam nodded with understanding. “So Leanne is mad and vindictive, and lays one hell of a curse on his prized heirloom mirror. Only instead of just targeting him like with a hex bag, she sets it to hit anyone who touches the thing.”  
  
Bobby raised an eyebrow at Dean, who was using toast to shove the last few bites of egg into his mouth, but refrained from commenting on his table manners this time.  
  
“Your dad said that he’d heard once that the man’s family was the reason he’d left Leanne. Which would explain why she cast her net so wide. Did a damn fine job of it, too; three centuries later and it’s still killing people.”  
  
“How?” Sam asked. “You said they have to touch it; does it poison them?” He was finishing his own breakfast with neat, methodical bites. Watching the two of them, it was hard to remember that it was _Sam_ who had spent more than twenty years running around the forest as a wolf, and just the last few leaning to be human.  
  
Dean casually wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his filthy shirt and reached for the pitcher to refill his glass.  
  
“Not poison.” Bobby leaned out to snag the roll of paper towels off the counter and tossed it to Dean. “It’s supposed to show the person who touches the glass their true nature, whatever the heck that means.”  
  
“And that makes them off themselves?” Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow.  
  
Bobby shrugged. “We like to believe our little fantasies about ourselves. The mirror takes away all that, shows you what you really are and makes you _feel_ it. Some people walk away from it unscathed, others get all twisted up and destroy themselves slowly. But a fair portion of those who come in contact with it grab the nearest knife and start opening veins. It’s bad news and belongs under lock and key.”  
  
“As amusing as this little round of name-that-creepy-cursed-object has been, I gotta ask again -- why do _we_ care?”  
  
Bobby smiled, and it was the kind of smile that always made Dean wish he’d gone to Florida for a break instead of South Dakota.  
  
“Roy is dead and none of the other locals are interested in keeping the thing. Can’t be destroyed; it’s been smashed at least half-a-dozen times. Salted, blessed, burned, buried. It always turns back up, so it needs safekeeping, but it looks like I’m the only one in the know who’s willing to warehouse the thing. And you boys are going to swing by Michigan and get it for me."

  
  
**Chapter Four**

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”  
                                                              ~Lewis Carroll 

  
The drive out to Michigan wasn’t really that bad. At least Bobby had let them hit the sack for awhile before he shoe-horned them out the door. After that and a long, hot shower, Dean felt human enough to keep most of his irritation to himself. He certainly owed Bobby enough that he wasn’t in a position to refuse an errand, but he did feel bad for Sam, whose much-anticipated break was getting shoved off _again_.  
  
Sam seemed to be taking it okay, though his mood at Bobby’s before leaving had seemed a little dispirited. Usually, he paid rapt attention any time Dean wandered around naked, but as Dean toweled his hair off and pulled clean clothes on over his damp skin, the wolf continued to stare out the window. Dean didn’t have to look to know that it was the line of distant pine trees that held Sam’s attention, and not the junked cars and scraped metal that took up most of Bobby’s lot.  
  
“It doesn’t take both of us to pick up a mirror. I can drop you off on the way and then meet up with you after I unload it,” Dean suggested, shrugging his jacket on.  
  
Sam frowned and glanced at him. “I’m fine, Dean. A few more days isn’t a big deal. You need the break as much as I do -- besides, would you stay behind while I ran an errand for Bobby?”  
  
“Considering how these sorts of favors usually turn out? No.” Dean shrugged as Sam’s attention returned to the window. “But don’t say I didn’t offer.”

~~~~~~~

Cloverdale, Michigan was quickly making its way onto Dean’s top ten list of places he never wanted to visit again. A list populated by such vacation destinations as Des Moines, where he had spent a truly awful week in temporary foster care when he was about nine due to some miscalculating on his dad’s part, and Wichita, where he spent a few hours when he was seventeen tied to an altar while a jackass in a black robe dripped disgusting things on him until Dean wiggled a hand loose and managed to get free. Sunvalley in Montana where he had met Sam had spent a couple of years with a starring place on the list, but then he and Sam made up and made out, and Dean decided it was a pretty okay place after all.  
  
Dean didn’t think Cloverdale was going to be so easily redeemed.  
  
It wasn’t really the city itself, it was the miserable countryside near it that seemed to have been mapped out by someone tossing a handful of pickup sticks at a blank map and saying, ‘yeah, go and do that,’ to the road-building team. Also, anyone who named streets with numbers should be flogged.  
  
Dean had to admit after Sam fell asleep for the third time in the middle of one of Dean’s regional planning rants that he probably needed a vacation as much as the wolf did. This kind of crap didn’t usually ruffle him, but he was frustrated, and annoyed, and just wanted to be done with the job. Which wasn’t really a _job_ in the ‘saving people’ sense Dean preferred, because anyone helped was only in potential danger and Dean was frankly unconvinced that this little errand couldn’t have waited a week.  
  
He drove down the same stretch of road for the third time and pulled up behind a battered blue pick-up that hadn’t been there the last time they passed. The guy leaning against it matched the general description of the contact Bobby had arranged to have meet them at the house, and he straightened up when Dean pulled in and eyed the Impala in an interested but not surprised way.  
  
Dean elbowed Sam awake. “I think this is it.”  
  
“Why?” Sam asked without opening his eyes, having heard the same thing four or five times by this point.  
  
“Because I’m pretty sure this is our contact, so get your ass out of the car.” Dean opened his own door and stepped out.  
  
“Phil Wallace,” the man offered, reaching out to shake Dean’s hand. The gesture surprised Dean. In his experience, hunters tended to want to keep their body parts to themselves and were more prone to suspicious looks and grunting when meeting for the first time --and every other time, too-- but he smiled gamely and shook.  
  
“Dean Winchester. This is my partner Sam. Bobby says you can show us where this item he wants is?”  
  
“I can show you _generally_ where it is.” Phil made a sweeping gesture that took in the heavily forested area off the road to the right. An impressive roofline was just visible about a quarter mile in the distance. “But I have no idea where to find it once we’re in the house.”  
  
“Do you know what it looks like?” Sam asked.  
  
“Nope. It’s a three-hundred-year-old mirror. The house is full of antiques. Or it was, back when Mick was still alive. Haven’t seen what Roy did with the place yet.”  
  
“Fantastic,” Dean sighed. “So it’s a huge house full of antiques and our only description is ‘old and reflective.’ That’s just excellent. Remind me to thank Bobby for the stunning awesomeness of this plan,” he told Sam, raking fingers through his short hair.  
  
“It’s supposed to be fatal to touch,” Phil offered. He seemed to visibly wilt a little under the twin glares Sam and Dean directed his way.  
  
“Fatal?” Sam demanded. “Bobby said it just showed someone their true nature, and if they couldn’t cope, they killed themselves. That’s not _fatal to touch_.”  
  
Phil swallowed. “Well... yeah. But its track record is impressive.”  
  
“Chill, Sam. No one touches any mirrors. If we think we’ve found it, then we can decide on a game plan. Okay?”  
  
Everyone nodded.  
  
“Great. Now, you have the keys?”  
  
“Yeah.” Phil patted his pocket. “My dad and Mick were buddies; he passed a year or so after Mick did and I inherited all his stuff. Roy could have changed the locks after he inherited the place, but I’d be surprised. It probably didn’t occur to him that someone as paranoid as his old man would have let anyone else have a set.”  
  
Dean shrugged. “If he did, it’s not like we can’t find our own way in. Just tell me you can diffuse the _other_ locks on the place.”  
  
“That’s why Bobby called me.”  
  
“Let’s go then. The sooner we get this thing, the sooner we can be gone.”

~~~~~~~

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”  
  
“What’s going on?” Sam asked sharply from the hall where he was helping Phil pack up the charms he had used to get through the house’s protective wards.  
  
Dean didn’t bother answering him, and when Sam stepped up beside him a moment later, Dean could hear his heavy sigh.  
  
The two rooms that Dean could see were littered with a tasteless hodgepodge of antique-looking furniture and trinkets. The walls were covered with a faded striped wallpaper and the carpet was an olive green shag that would have been more at home in a seventies sit-com. But what hung on the walls was the real downer: they were _littered_ with mirrors. Big mirrors, small mirrors, mirrors in elaborate frames, mirrors with plain frames, some with no frames at all.  
  
“Phil, get in here!” Dean yelled, as Sam walked down a short hallway and disappeared around the corner.  
  
Phil swore as he stepped up behind Dean. “It wasn’t like this before.”  
  
“It’s like this now,” Dean growled.  
  
“Maybe it’s just this room?” Phil didn’t sound very hopeful.  
  
“No,” Sam confirmed, coming back into view. “All the rooms down here are the same.”  
  
“Great. Anyone have any ideas?”  
  
Phil shook his head, Sam just shrugged.  
  
“Fine then. I guess just... look for anything different. Phil, when you were here before, did you see any mirrors in the house?”  
  
“I was pretty young last time I was here and don’t remember any. I used to come in the back and eat cookies in the kitchen, but Mick and his wife were alive back then and... it just didn’t look anything like this.”  
  
“And this house has how many floors?”  
  
Phil looked miserable. “Three.”  
  
Sam ignored them both and walked over to examine one of the mirrors.  
  
“Watch your hands,” Dean reminded him. Sam glanced back so Dean could get the full benefit of his eye-roll, then returned to his inspection.  
  
“They aren’t very dusty,” he observed.  
  
“Young Roy was a marvelous housekeeper,” Dean snapped with frustration.  
  
Sam straightened and turned to face them with that too-patient expression that always made Dean itch to throw something at him.  
  
“ _Someone_ was making an attempt, and that someone probably knew why this place was decorated like this. You think maybe that someone knew at least as much about the mirror as we do?” Sam raised an expectant eyebrow.  
  
Dean nodded slowly. “Even with a duster, you wouldn’t want to touch something like that.”  
  
“Wait,” Phil cut in, “are you guys suggesting we search this entire house and examine every mirror looking for one that’s _dustier_ than the others?”  
  
“You have a better plan?”  
  
Phil’s shoulders slumped.

~~~~~~~

Four hours later found Sam and Dean both sprawled on an overstuffed, sheet-draped couch. Dean was drumming the fingers of one hand on the armrest in frustration and Sam was sitting so close to him that their thighs were pressed together from hip to knee. One raised eyebrow from Dean had dared Phil to comment on it and their de facto host had wisely found other things to focus on.  
  
“Look, you guys have done your best. We’ve searched every mirror in the place, and we can’t tell them apart. Either you load them all up, or you admit defeat.”  
  
Sam sighed. “If we leave without it, Bobby’s just going to send us right back. Do you want to have to do this again?”  
  
Phil shook his head. “No, but I don’t see any other options.”  
  
“We’ll think of something,” Sam told him confidently. He leaned his head back against the cushion and looked over at Dean curiously. The drumming had stopped but Dean hadn’t said anything. He was staring off at one of the walls as if lost in thought.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
Dean held up one hand, asking for a moment, not shifting his gaze from the opposite wall.  
  
Finally, he spoke. “Phil, you said you weren’t here enough to remember if any of these mirrors used to be here, right?”  
  
“I might be able to describe the kitchen to you, but that would be about it.”  
  
“So you wouldn’t know if we were missing a door?”  
  
Phil blinked, baffled. “What?”  
  
But Sam was nodding. “We’re missing space.”  
  
Dean stood up and gave the wall a suspicious look. “Yeah, I think so. It’s a little screwy with all the mirrors, and with the carpet and wallpaper being the same in the entire house, but I’m pretty sure we’re missing at least one room -- and if I’m right, I think I even know where to find it.”  
  
He headed confidently down the stairs to the second floor and then deeper into the house until he came to a halt in front of a large hutch against the wall and looked at Sam and Phil expectantly.  
  
“Do you see it?” Dean grinned.  
  
Phil just looked confused, but Sam had backtracked to poke his head into one of the rooms off the corridor and looked pleased when he rejoined them. “All the doors on this floor open off of the hallway, and we checked all of those rooms. But the last bedroom isn’t as deep as the hallway is long. There’s plenty of room for a small room next to it.”  
  
“Uh, that’s great guys,” Phil broke in, “but that room has a closet facing the other way, and I don’t see any doors.”  
  
“Don’t you?” Dean leaned casually on the hutch.  
  
“It’s the,” Sam waved a hand at the massive carved wood Dean was leaning on, “furniture thing there. It’s the only furniture in this entire house pushed against a wall. Whoever did the decorating went out of their way to keep the walls free for their mirror collection. So why this piece at all?”  
  
Phil’s eyes widened with understanding as Dean and Sam worked to get the hutch shoved far enough away to reveal a simple wooden door recessed into the wall.  
  
Dean twisted the handle and pushed; the door opened on hinges squeaky with long disuse. Through the doorway, they could all see a wide four-poster bed with a deep green comforter, and against the far wall stood a low wooden dresser. Everything was heavily coated with dust, and like every other room in the house, every inch of wall was covered with mirrors.  
  
“Any of these look familiar, Phil?”  
  
Phil gave Dean an irritated look as he stepped past him into the doorway. “I told you, I don’t remember any mirrors in the house.”  
  
He moved deeper into the room and started examining the mirrors. Dean followed him, checking the frames to see if there was any difference in the dust on them. All of the frames were far dustier than anywhere else in the house. The room was small and Sam stayed in the doorway, watching as they explored.  
  
Finally Phil sighed. “Nothing. There’s _nothing_ to set any of these apart. Do you think there might be more hidden rooms somewhere?”  
  
“Maybe, but we aren’t done with this room yet.” The mirrors in the house were hung two, three, or sometimes as many as four in a column on the walls, stacked, staggered and arranged like puzzle pieces to make allowances for the difference in size and shapes. There were two over the headboard of the bed. The lower frame Dean could examine from the floor, but the one over it was too far away. He climbed up onto the bed and stood on the mattress; the lower edge of the frame was level with the top of his head and Dean stood on his tiptoes to try and gauge the amount of dust on the edge. He couldn’t tell any difference in the dust on the frame from the dust on any other frame in the room, but there was something else odd about it.  
  
The angle was bad, but he still should have been able to see the top of his hair.  
  
Dean took a cautious step back so that he was standing in the middle of the bed and raised his arm, waving it back and forth just to make sure. In the reflection, he could see the mirrors on the opposite walls, the ugly wallpaper, the ceiling, the posters on the bed... and nothing else. Sam was no longer standing in the doorway and Dean braced one hand on his shoulder as he hopped off the bed.  
  
“What’s the problem?”  
  
Dean glanced over at Phil. “Unless the Rogers family was stockpiling magic mirrors in this funhouse they called home, I think we have a winner.”

  
  
**Chapter Five**

“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror  
and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”  
                                                                                 ~Douglas Adams

  
The mirror was about four by three feet and set in an elaborate dark wooden frame. Sam, being a few inches taller, did his own reflection test.  
  
“It feels weird,” he announced when he was done, sliding back to the floor.  
  
“What’s weird?” Phil asked sharply, having grown edgy since Dean’s discovery of the mirror.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes and stripped the comforter off the bed. “The non-reflective reflective glass. Chill out. We’ll be out of here within thirty minutes and all of this will be a bad dream.”  
  
Phil scowled and went back to staring at the mirror like he expected it to jump off the wall and attack.  
  
“ _Weird_?” Dean mouthed at Sam questioningly once Phil’s back was turned.  
  
Sam shrugged and pulled the other side of the comforter free. Dean frowned but let it go, unwilling to try and pin Sam into an _actual_ answer with Phil listening in.  
  
“Okay,” Dean announced. “So everyone seems to think you have to actually touch the damn thing to trigger it. So ignoring all of the _othe_ r exciting wrong or missing information, if we use this quilt as a barrier, we should be good. We’ll just get it off the wall, wrap it up like a present, and deliver it to Bobby. Like a combined birthday-Christmas-lose-our-number-we’re-on-vacation gift.”  
  
“What if we break it?” Sam asked quietly.  
  
Dean shrugged. “It will reform in its frame.”  
  
“What about if we break it and then destroy the frame?”  
  
“Nice thought, but it’s been tried. You heard Bobby. Eventually, it just... turns back up.” Dean gave the mirror a dirty look. “Unscathed and just as dangerous as it started out.”  
  
“Put it in a box and bury it?” Sam suggested hopefully.  
  
Dean shook his head. “Things like this don’t like to be buried. Sometimes people try, but they usually pop right back up, and there’s no telling who’ll end up with it then. The best place for supernatural nuclear waste like this is under someone’s foot. If Bobby wants to do it, he’s a better man than me.”  
  
“Me too,” Phil spoke up from where he was playing nervously with the corner of the bedspread. “How do we want to do this? A mirror that size in a frame like that -- it could easily weigh a hundred pounds or more.”  
  
“Probably more. Sam could lift it maybe, but with the size and height and us standing on the bed... it would be too awkward.” Dean glanced at Sam for confirmation. Sam nodded. “Maybe the best thing is for you and me to get it off the wall, and then once we have it unhooked, Sam can reach up and help us keep it stable until we have it down on the mattress.”  
  
“Down on the mattress? You want us to _stand_ on the mattress?” Phil sounded extremely dubious.  
  
“You have a better plan?” Dean sighed, ready to be done with the job hours ago. “We can’t reach the damn thing unless we stand on something. And there’s no place to move the bed so we can bring in something else. We could dismantle it, I suppose, then drag all the pieces out, then go find some step ladders...”  
  
“Never mind,” Phil cut Dean off after a quick glance at his watch. “Let’s just take it down.”  
  
“You have some place to be?”  
  
“Home,” Phil grunted, climbing up beside him.  
  
Dean snorted and grabbed the comforter. He waited until Sam had climbed up too and everyone had shifted their weight, seeking stability on the springy surface.  
  
“Everyone feel safe?” He smiled without humor, then handed a corner of the blanket to Phil and the top half to Sam. Phil and Dean each grabbed an edge of the frame.  
  
“Don’t lift yet,” Dean instructed, “just pull out slowly and let me see how it’s attached to the wall first.” But a quick, cautious peek showed that the mirror was just hung by a piece of wire, and after an experimental push to judge weight, the two worked on lifting it from its hook and lowering it slowly.  
  
The procedure was going well and Sam was just stepping forward to flip the rest of the comforter up over the mirror when Phil slipped. If he had been standing anywhere but the edge of a mattress, he probably could have recovered instantly, but instead he stumbled and slipped to the floor. The sharp, unexpected jerk of his fall in the instant before he let go dragged Dean off balance too, so that he fell on his ass on the bed, pulling the mirror down on top of himself. Sam instinctively threw out a hand to stop the mirror’s fall, but miscalculated his aim in the chaos and the base of his palm brushed glass. He sneezed hard before sliding his grip up to the safer wooden frame.  
  
Mirror momentarily stabilized, Sam looked to make sure Dean was unharmed and met shocked green eyes in a face so pale every faint freckle stood out like an ink spot.  
  
“Sam...” Dean breathed in horror.  
  
“It will be okay, Dean,” Sam told him quietly. He waited until Phil scrambled away, then slid the heavy antique over the side of the bed so it rested on the floor. Then he climbed down himself and walked over to it.  
  
“Don’t look into it!” Phil yelled, reaching for the discarded bedspread and trying to throw it over the glass. “You might be okay if you don’t--”  
  
“I have to look.” Sam pulled the blanket back. “It will be okay,” he repeated, when he caught Dean’s haunted gaze again, absolute silence the biggest indicator of how upset Dean was.  
  
“Maybe you’re thinking of a different mirror,” Phil muttered, but he shut up and stepped back at the vicious look Dean slashed at him.  
  
“Get out,” Dean snapped.  
  
“I slipped! I didn’t do this on purpose! It was your stupid idea to stand on the bed!”  
  
 _Your stupid idea._.. His decision, and the curse had fallen on Sam.  
  
Dean took a deep breath, resisting the urge to scream. Screaming, even at Phil, wasn’t going to help anything. And right now, Sam needed all of his attention. “I’m not saying you did, just... wait in the other room for us. We’ll be out in a sec.”  
  
Dean walked around until he could see the reflective side of the mirror too. Sam was standing patiently in front of it, but so far nothing was happening. Nothing that Dean could see, anyways.  
  
Phil moved out of their way, but stayed in the doorway, watching, curious about what was going to happen. Dean wanted to chase him off, but he wanted to go to Sam more.  
  
Dean stepped up beside him and lowered his voice. “Nothing says you have to look.”  
  
Sam brushed his fingers over the back of Dean’s hand, trying to reassure him. “I do, I _feel_ like I do. But it will be okay.”  
  
“It won’t be,” Dean hissed. “You heard what Bobby said, and Phil. People die. _Everyone_ dies.”  
  
“Not _everyone_. Bobby said it killed people who couldn’t face their own truth, and Phil knew even less than that. It will be--” His voice broke off and all his attention focused on the glass where a soft of haze was starting to form.  
  
Dean grabbed Sam’s hand, in that instant not giving a damn what Phil could or could not see, and watched with him. After a few seconds that felt like eternity, the mirror showed a reflection of Sam that was... off. There was no specific difference that Dean could point out. It was Sam, wearing Sam’s clothes and Sam’s intent expression. But there was something in his reflection that was... savage. Usually, there was nothing about Sam that would make anyone give him a second glance, but no one would have passed casually by the form in the mirror.  
  
Dean would never have mistaken the reflection for a human man, and yet he recognized him instantly, instinctively even. It was _Sam_. He knew Sam. But Sam’s reflection was somewhat translucent, with an intangibility that made it seem a poor second to the massive wolf that looked so _present_ that Dean would not have been surprised to reach out and touch fur. Dean knew the wolf just as well as the man. It was also Sam, after all. And for the first year of their relationship, it was a version of Sam that Dean saw far more often that its human-seeming counterpart. But like the reflection of the human-Sam, the wolf seemed different than Dean remembered. He couldn’t quite grasp why, though, and after a moment, he pulled himself out of his fascination with the sharp recall that the _spell wasn’t aimed at him_.  
  
Dean gripped Sam’s wrist, and he looked up at Sam’s face when he didn’t respond to a hard squeeze.  
  
Sam’s expression was odd. He didn’t look upset, more... bemused.  
  
“Sam?”  
  
After a moment, Sam peeled his gaze away from the reflection and gave Dean a look that was probably supposed to be reassuring. “I’m okay.”  
  
“What do you see?”  
  
“You can’t see the reflection?” Sam sounded surprised.  
  
“Of course I can see the reflection,” Dean growled, finding irritation more comfortable ground than fear. “I can see you,” he lowered his voice again after a quick glance over to see Phil in the doorway gaping at the mirror, “you know, both your forms. I’m asking if that’s... all.”  
  
Sam looked back at the reflection thoughtfully. “I see that, but really it’s more of a feeling than what I can see with my eyes. And it’s not bad. Just... different. It’s weird.”  
  
“Weird can get bad in a hurry.” Dean gave the mirror a dark look.  
  
Sam shrugged. “I don’t think so. I think it’s shown me what it wanted to, what I do with it is up to me. I’m okay, Dean.” He turned to face Dean directly and smiled. Dean looked intently but saw nothing in Sam’s eyes that indicated he was being anything but completely honest. “It didn’t show me anything I didn’t know already,” Sam said softly. “Wolves are maybe more honest with ourselves than humans are.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“As sure as I can be. Let’s get this thing wrapped up and back to Bobby’s. I _really_ feel like taking that break now. I’ll go get the ropes from the car.” He turned and brushed by Phil without giving the mirror another glance.  
  
“That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Phil said flatly, the instant Sam turned the corner. “What the fuck _was_ that? With the wolf and all.”  
  
“It’s a cursed mirror; did you think it would work like the ones you hang in your bathroom?” Dean snapped back. “Who the hell knows how it works? Why don’t you come try it out and we can see what _you_ look like.”  
  
Phil backed away like he was afraid Dean was going to shove him into it. Dean rolled his eyes and busied himself wrapping the mirror carefully with the quilt until Sam came back and they tied it up and carried it out to the car.

~~~~~~~

They stayed that night in a seedy motel that was interesting mostly in the decorator’s passionate devotion to aqua. But it was clean and the AC worked, so Dean certainly wasn’t complaining. The color wasn’t a problem with the lights off anyway, and Dean had other things on his mind than garish paint.  
  
He had called Bobby as soon as they left the house. Bobby was pleased they had the mirror, but mumbled something about ‘emanations’ in a concerned tone of voice. Concerned enough that he called every hour to make sure things were still okay, though officially he was checking to make sure they hasn’t been sidetracked and gone to Atlantic City with his cursed artifact in tow. Dean wasn’t in the mood for it and finally told him curtly that they would call him if there were any problems, then turned off his phone. He turned off Sam’s too, and the wolf said nothing about it. He didn’t like cell phones anyway.  
  
“Emanations?” Sam asked, as Dean tossed the cell phone back on his lap.  
  
Dean gave him a _look_. Sam shrugged and went back to the magazine he had been flipping through.  
  
And Sam seemed okay. A little quiet and contemplative, but not upset or unhappy. He’d pulled Dean to him and down onto the bed as soon as the door closed behind them and the mirror was safely leaned against the wall, a chair shoved in front of it to make sure there wouldn’t be any falling over or stumbling into it in the middle of the night.  
  
The wolf’s desire had been an easy thing, and it suited Dean’s mood fine. Sam was sweet and relaxed, opening himself beneath Dean with dark eyes and half understood murmurs that didn’t need coherency to make themselves clear. It was comfort and reassurance after a day that was far more exciting than it should have been.  
  
Dean buried his face in Sam’s neck and inhaled deeply as he rode out the afterglow, anchored in Sam’s living presence. He stayed there, fighting off the return of the cold emptiness in the pit of his stomach as the rushing pleasure of sex dissipated, leaving him with the more profound, if less intense, pleasure of _Sam_. But that only lasted a couple of minutes before Sam squirmed and shoved at his shoulder until Dean rolled off with a huff.  
  
He lay sprawled on his back blinking up at the ceiling, then turned his head to admire the shifting muscles of Sam’s back as he sat up.  
  
“You can top next time.”  
  
Sam turned to look at him, expression odd. “If you want. Are we taking turns now?”  
  
Dean scratched idly at his stomach.  
  
“If we are, we aren’t doing it very well. I don’t even remember the last time you... Was it Illinois?” He frowned.  
  
“That field outside of Grayslake. We bought sandwiches from that gas station and got the blanket out of the backseat to watch the full moon rise.” Sam smiled at the memory.  
  
“I remember that we ended up on the grass anyways and I got green stains in unusual places. It was worth it, though,” Dean grinned. “We could go for a repeat performance in a few days,” he added suggestively.  
  
Sam didn’t say anything, just picked at the edge of the sheet absently.  
  
“I mean, we don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Dean added with a frown, watching Sam’s face. “I just…” An awkward pause and Dean decided just to ask. “Do you... not like it?”  
  
The idea of Sam not liking to top was baffling to Dean. They didn’t always go for full-on penetration when they had some private time to amuse themselves; Sam had an active imagination and Dean had years of experience to draw from. But having Sam pressed beneath him, that little hitch in his breath when Dean shoved himself deep... that was a rush like no other.  
  
“I like it fine, Dean. I just... like this better.” Sam shrugged.  
  
“I like this better too. But I don’t _dislike_ it the other way, and I feel like I’ve been, I don’t know. Taking advantage?”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “Do I seem to have any trouble speaking up to you?”  
  
“I didn’t think so,” Dean snapped back. “But we’ve been having sex for months now and this is the first I’m hearing from you that you don’t like to top.”  
  
“I thought spreading my legs and telling you to fuck me was pretty clear.”  
  
Dean stared at him. “Yeah, for _right then_. I didn’t realizing it was a standing order!”  
  
“More of a suggestion,” Sam told him with maddening calm.  
  
“Fuck, Sam,” Dean finally sighed, at a loss for anything else.  
  
After a moment, Sam took some pity on him. “I think it’s a wolf thing, if that helps.”  
  
“I don’t need _help_ , I just want you to tell me when there are things about _our sex life_ I should know. And what the hell do you mean, you ‘think it’s a wolf thing’?”  
  
“I just mean that we’re a pack. A little, tiny one, but still a pack. Packs need structure, and one of the ways you reinforce structure is with sex.”  
  
Dean thought that over. “So... I’m like the dominant wolf and you’re… what? Submissive?”  
  
Sam hit him in the face with a pillow. He wasn’t gentle about it. “Do I seem very _submissive_ to you?”  
  
“Not really,” Dean growled, making sure his nose wasn’t broken. “So then what the hell did you mean?”  
  
“We’re partners and we make decisions together, but we’re also pack. In the wolf world, you would be Alpha.”  
  
“And that does me what kind of good?”  
  
Sam’s eyes were very serious when he met Dean’s gaze. “It’s not about _your_ good, it’s about the _pack’s_ good. It’s a little different with my people than a real wolf pack; we all get a voice, but you get the final call.”  
  
“I’m in charge.”  
  
Sam’s look was anything but respectful. Dean ignored it and continued.  
  
“And this ties into you not wanting to top... how?”  
  
“I just like it better when you do. I like the weight of you on my back, I like the feel of you in my body. It feels right, like... like that’s how it’s supposed to be.” Sam’s brow furrowed, searching for a way to explain it to Dean in a way that would make sense to a man who had none of his instincts. “It’s... safe.”  
  
“ _Safe_?”  
  
Now it was Sam’s turn to glare. “Safe. Like you’re in charge and things are like they should be. It feels good the other way physically, but I can’t enjoy it the same way because it just feels wrong in my head.”  
  
“You should have told me.”  
  
“It’s not a big deal.”  
  
“It is a big deal, Sam! If you don’t want to top you fucking well don’t have to. It’s just that a little _heads up_ would have been nice. You should have told me about the wolf whatever and this pack structure thing you’ve got worked out.”  
  
“This doesn’t change anything, Dean! I’m not going to suddenly start snapping to attention because you tell me to do something. And I don’t mind sometimes; you just don’t need to worry about _turns_.”  
  
Dean ground his teeth and counted to thirty, twice, before he trusted himself to speak again. “Anything else you think I need to know about before we agree to drop this?”  
  
“You didn’t _need_ to know this.” The wolf slid off the bed. He grimaced and shifted his weight, uncomfortable. “I’m taking a shower. You want to come?”  
  
Dean groaned and let the argument go. Meat hooks couldn’t make Sam talk about anything Sam didn’t want to talk about. “Do you remember what happened last time we tried to bathe together in a motel shower?”  
  
Sam smirked. “It was fun.”  
  
“I almost broke my elbow hitting the tile when I fell out, taking the shower curtain with me. And you put a hole in the drywall when you tripped over the curtain trying to see if I’d broken anything. We didn’t even get a little bit clean, the people on both sides complained, and the manager walked in on us naked and tried to throw us out. I had to have a talk with him in the parking lot in the middle of the night. Wearing the shower curtain. In thirty-degree weather. Do you remember why I was in the parking lot, wet, wearing a shower curtain in thirty degrees?”  
  
“He was checking out your ass. And I only growled a little.”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “We aren’t taking a shower together. You go clean up and I’ll keep the bed warm. And don’t think we aren’t going to get back around to your little revelation either!”  
  
Sam snorted and vanished into the bathroom.  
  
All hints of amusement fell from Dean’s face and he found himself staring at the blanket-wrapped mirror. It was insane, and probably suicidal, but there was something in him that desperately wanted to touch it. He had been intrigued on some level ever since Bobby mentioned it, but since watching Sam’s experience, the urge was almost overwhelming. So was the fear.  
  
His father’s corpse was four years cold. He managed to keep it out of his mind usually, but there was always that lingering fear. Why hadn’t his father called him for that hunt? Why hadn’t he been able to deal with his father’s death without breaking down so badly he almost gave up the job? Everyone he knew had suffered losses in their lives; they went on. What was it about _him_ that made it so freaking hard? He saw faith and affection in Sam’s eyes, and he trusted Sam and Sam’s judgment more than he trusted himself in some things. But he was waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares of Sam’s death. He needed to know that it wasn’t him. That there wasn’t something horribly wrong with _him_ that would lead to that end. The mirror could show him that, could set his fears to rest and give him some peace from the doubts that haunted him.  
  
And if he couldn’t take the truth, then he was probably better off dead anyways.

  
  
**Chapter Six**

I was an accomplice in my own frustration.  
                                ~Peter Schaffer

  
“So -- where the hell is Bobby?!” Dean kicked the door again in frustration. All of the doors and windows were shut fast, and Bobby’s favorite truck was missing from its usual spot by the house. “We’ve got his freaking mirror; this was not the time for a fishing trip! The least he could have done was called!”  
  
“Did you turn your phone back on?” Sam asked from where he was leaning casually against the Impala.  
  
Dean cursed under his breath, having no doubt Sam’s supernatural hearing picked the words up clearly. He fished his phone from his pants pocket. He didn’t remember if he had turned it back on that morning or not, but was unsurprised to see the darkness of the screen when he flipped it open.  
  
“Did _you_?” Dean demanded, as he waited for his phone to power up.  
  
Sam shrugged gracefully and Dean knew he most certainly hadn’t. Only it was probably deliberate whereas Dean had simply forgotten. Sam _really_ hated cell phones. Something about the pitch hurt his ears.  
  
Sure enough, Dean found half a dozen missed calls and three messages. All from Bobby.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
Sam walked over as Dean punched through the menu then listened to the messages. When it was done, he felt like grinding the phone under his foot.  
  
“Bobby’s on a job, and he can’t be reached by phone. Something about electrical whatever. He says we can stuff the mirror in his basement, only this place is like a freaking magical death trap, and I don’t have the key anymore!” Dean glared at the deceptively innocent looking glass of the front window.  
  
A minute later, he spun at the sound of a lock clicking open and the squeal of a deliberately unoiled door hinge. Sam had one foot inside the house and was peering into the cavernous darkness.  
  
“How did you do that?!”  
  
Sam stepped back onto the sunny porch and dangled a familiar silver key on a leather strap.  
  
“Bobby said not to let you know I had this. Something about you losing it before?” His expression was innocent enough, but Dean knew him well enough to detect the amusement just under the surface.  
  
“I only _lost_ it when you _stole_ it from me,” Dean growled, stalking past and heading for the Impala. The sooner they had the damn mirror stashed, the sooner he had one less headache to worry about.

~~~~~~~

Dragging the mirror downstairs took less than twenty minutes. It would have only taken about five -- but there was an extra ten minutes’ allowance for snapping and growling about who wasn’t holding their end high enough, and which way who should turn to take the corners. Dean didn’t know where exactly Bobby wanted it, so they left it wrapped in the quilt and slid it behind a dusty old glass-front cabinet filled with assorted trinkets that Dean in no way wanted to touch. He had no idea what any of the stuff was or did, but the worst spanking Dean had ever gotten as a child had been for sneaking downstairs one dull summer evening when he was about seven. Having Bobby describe the contents of the area as ‘supernatural nuclear waste’ didn’t make him eager to spend any time there as an adult. Besides, every time Sam brushed against the wood, he sneezed. It was definitely time to go.  
  
Upstairs, with the mirror safely stowed away, the day felt... lighter. Dean almost bounced up the last step and actually hummed while he rifled Bobby’s refrigerator without a shred of guilt for pinching the man’s last beer.  
  
Sam snagged a package of deli ham and went rummaging for a loaf of bread. He slapped a sandwich together and handed it to Dean before building another one with decidedly more meat on it. “Do you want to stay the night?”  
  
Sam’s voice was neutral, but Dean could hear the impatience in it. He rolled his eyes. “No. Why would I want to stay in a nice, warm, soft bed inside four walls with a roof when I could be freezing to death in a tent in the middle of a godforsaken forest surrounded by who knows what?”  
  
Sam heard the ‘we’re leaving in a sec; hold your horses’ conveyed in Dean’s tone and grinned, shoulders suddenly starting to relax from a strain that had been building for months. No matter how he personally felt about camping, to see Sam’s face light up and even just the slightest ebb of tension was worth however many days of misery Dean had to endure.  
  
“It won’t be cold. It will be so warm you won’t even need clothes,” Sam promised.  
  
Dean dusted his hands off on his jeans and snorted. “We’re camping; it’s always cold. It’s a law of nature: birds gotta fly, campers gotta freeze. And don’t get any idea about clothes -- they stay on. I’m only willing to have some things on my rap sheet, and indecent exposure isn’t one of them.”  
  
Sam pinned Dean in place with a suddenly heated gaze, flicking his thumb over the button on his jeans. “Really? They stay on _all_ the time?”  
  
Dean’s brain ground to a halt. The night before had been good, but brief and more for reassurance than to really scratch the itch. And before that, it had been... God. Too long.  
  
Dean took a step towards Sam -- and the wolf pulled his hand from his jeans and backed up with a smirk. “We have to go, remember? We don’t want to miss check-in.”  
  
Dean was about to growl something unflattering about Sam’s probable ancestry, colorful as it already was, when one of the phones on Bobby’s wall cut through the mood like a knife, causing both of them to jump.  
  
The kitchen phone bank was impressive, with phones labeled everything from ‘CIA’” to ‘Becky’s Boutique’ --a phone Bobby was particularly cagey about-- but the one ringing was unlabeled, and Dean knew it was Bobby’s actual home line.  
  
“Ignore it,” Sam said flatly. “It’s not our house and we aren’t even supposed to be here. If they need to reach Bobby that badly, they should know his cell.”  
  
Dean hovered in indecision. What Sam said was true, but Dean also knew that Bobby was out of touch, and very, very few people had the number for his home line. And all of those were hunters. Answering a call on that line could be the difference between life and death for someone, or a lot of someones.  
  
Before he could decide, the ringing stopped, the lingering silence almost as startling as the first sudden ring had been. Sam let out the breath he had been holding with a huff, then started walking. “See? Problem solved. Let’s go.”  
  
Dean followed, and had one foot over the kitchen threshold when the shrill ring sliced through the air again. He met Sam’s annoyed gaze with a miserably apologetic look, then reached for the receiver. “Singer’s.”  
  
Sam stormed outside.

~~~~~~~

Dean found Sam out on the steps about twenty minutes later. The wolf was on the bottom step, long legs sprawled out in the dust of the patchy yard, leaning back on his elbows. Dean sat next to him and there was silence between them for a while. But it was more companionable than stressed, and eventually Dean broke it with a sigh.  
  
“I’m going to drop you off at the park. I’ll probably push a few more hours and grab a room. This shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, if that, then I’ll meet up with you. I’ll still spend the whole two weeks, so this way you score a few more days.”  
  
Sam stirred, brushing against Dean as he straightened up. “Don’t be stupid. If we have another job... then we have another job. We can do the camping thing afterwards.”  
  
“You don’t sound angry. I thought you were pretty pissed when you went outside.”  
  
“I’m just frustrated, Dean. I can handle it. No one is going off on their own. What’s the emergency anyway?”  
  
Dean snorted. “Hardly an emergency. Phil-I-don’t-know-what-the-mirror-looks-like-Wilkins is acting like he’s caught fire over some haunting back in Michigan. It’s not even really a ghost hunt, he just wants a consult from someone who has dealt with more of these than he has. Some direction and advice. He was calling in his favor from Bobby for helping us out, but Bobby is out of reach. This doesn’t take both of us and it’s not that big of a detour to drop you off.”  
  
Sam crossed his arms. “If it’s not that big of a deal, then he can wait a couple of weeks.”  
  
“I certainly think so, but... he sounds really desperate. And he _did_ help us out, and if I can do this to settle the score, then that’s one less marker floating around out there.”  
  
“He doesn’t need a marker to get our help with hunter’s business.”  
  
“No,” Dean shrugged, “but it’s leverage. And it’s always better to keep the table clean.” He flashed a humorless smile. “Or in your favor. This should just be a few days at the most.”  
  
“Then we can do it together,” Sam repeated stubbornly.  
  
Dean stood up and held a hand out. “Do you _really_ want to be holed up in a no-doubt musty old basement with an ancient book collection, straining your eyes staring and fading ink in the off chance you find a good clue? For _hours_?” Seeing the gleam in Sam’s eyes --his passion for musty old books was the most unnatural thing about him in Dean’s opinion-- Dean hastily added, “When you could be out roaming the woods chasing small animals and sleeping naked in the forest?”  
  
Sam took the hand and let Dean pull him to his feet.  
  
“You told me I couldn’t sleep naked unless I was in a tent,” he pointed out with only the slightest hint of a sulk to his tone.  
  
“I said you couldn’t _if I went with you_ ,” Dean reminded him, “but if I’m not there...”  
  
Sam hesitated. “You’re just doing research? For a couple of days?”  
  
“Promise.”  
  
“And you’ll call me if anything happens to make it more... exciting?”  
  
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to look kind of funny wearing only your skin and your cell phone.”  
  
“I think my fashion sense can take the blow,” Sam said dryly.  
  
Dean’s lip curled into a smile despite himself. “I promise. Anything but talk and books and I’ve got you on speed dial.”  
  
Sam still didn’t look completely convinced, but he nodded slowly in agreement.  
  
“Great,” Dean declared, “then let’s get this house locked up and hit the road.”

~~~~~~~

“I’m still not sure I like this, Dean.”  
  
“You’ve said that, Sam. Now the next step is for you to get out and... do whatever it is you do in the woods.”  
  
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Actually, I’m not unsure. I _don’t_ like this plan. At all.”  
  
Dean leaned across him and pulled the door handle, shoving the passenger door open in obvious invitation. “’Bye, Sam.”  
  
They were parked on an access road along the margin of Ottawa National Forest that had seen little recent use, judging from the tall grass almost obscuring the dirt tracks. It was almost two in the morning and the ranger station was long past closed. Dean figured Sam could go amuse himself until the sun came up, then walk around to the station and register the normal way.  
  
Sam climbed out reluctantly. “Why do I have to take this bag again?”  
  
“Because even a dim ranger will be suspicious of a guy who walks up with no gear who wants a backcountry camping pass,” Dean replied patiently. “The goal is to avoid suspicion. I’ll be back in a couple of days, Sam. I doubt most of this park has cell coverage, so I’ll meet you in the picnic area at the main gate around noon in three days. If I can’t be there then I’ll call you.”  
  
Sam closed the door and walked around to the rolled-down driver’s side window. “What if you finish early?”  
  
“Then I’ll spend an extra day in a motel instead of on the cold ground. It’ll be fine. I’ve been taking care of myself for a while, you know? Chill.”  
  
Sam nodded reluctantly but looked so miserable that Dean grabbed his shirt and pulled until Sam was leaning low in the window and Dean could catch his mouth in an easy kiss.  
  
“Hey,” Dean said gently when they separated again. “We spent a lot longer than a few days apart before, and I’m not doing anything dangerous. What’s really wrong here?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Sam’s eyes had narrowed when Dean mentioned their two-year separation, but he straightened and shook his head. “I just... have a bad feeling.”  
  
“You werewolves run to psychics?”  
  
“Not usually.”  
  
“Then relax. And keep your clothes on as much as you can stand to,” Dean added, pained. “This isn’t the valley forest, it’s not as big or as dense, and if people see a naked man running around in here, it’s not going to stop with some local gossip down at the diner.”  
  
Sam flashed him a grin despite the reluctance Dean could still see in his eyes. “You don’t think I can outrun the cops?”  
  
“It will be park rangers and I have no doubt you can outrun them. I just don’t want to see your bare ass on the six o’clock news as you scamper off into the bushes a hop, skip and a jump ahead of gun-toting officials and a pack of dogs.”  
  
“I like dogs.”  
  
“Do dogs like you?”  
  
Sam cocked his head thoughtfully. “Not really.”  
  
“Then probably best to avoid them in an official capacity. You need anything else?”  
  
“I don’t need _this_ much.” Sam glanced down the length of his own body and at the half-filled backpack sitting in the scrub by his feet.  
  
Dean snorted. “See you in a few days.”

  
  
**Chapter Seven**

“People don't do things for you or [](http://statcounter.com/tumblr/)against you, they do things for themselves  
\- it's fortune, good or bad, to be in the way”  
                                                             ~anonymous 

  
Around noon the following day, Dean pulled into the cracked driveway of a split-level ranch-style house. It was only a few miles from the wooded mansion he had helped ransack for the mirror a few days before, but at least these streets had actual road names. Dean scanned the area by habit. The nearest neighbors’ house could barely be seen in the distance, and cattle and goats grazed in fields on both sides of the road. About a hundred feet from the driveway was a barn, and worn tracks in the grass showed where vehicles had been driven to it from the road. A child’s rusting swing set could be seen in the yard. The house itself could probably have used a new coat of paint and some repairs, but it generally appeared to be a pretty nice family home.  
  
Dean had no idea why Phil wanted to meet him there. Most hunters in his experience who were lucky enough to have a family went out of their way to keep them separate from the job. But Phil himself had grown up under the feet of hunters, so maybe it was just the way they did things in these parts.  
  
He rang the doorbell and waited. After a minute or two, he heard the scrape of the lock and then the door swung open. Phil Wallace was standing there. To Dean’s eye, he looked much as he had when they had parted, stressed and a little wild-eyed, but he didn’t know the man very well and it was possible he was usually like that.  
  
“Everything okay?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, Dean -- good to see you again.”  
  
“I’ve been gone barely a day, Phil. I’m not sure it’s been long enough to count as ‘again’ yet.”  
  
Phil gave Dean a somewhat strained smile and stepped back, allowing Dean space to enter. Dean did, cautiously. Something was off, but he had no idea what.  
  
“So... what’s the big problem you’re having that you can’t handle these spooks yourself?”  
  
The door slammed shut behind Dean. As he spun, he saw the blur of an object swinging towards his head and then nothing.

~~~~~~~

When Dean woke up, he was handcuffed to a chair, a state that was becoming depressingly familiar to him. His head ached so bad he wouldn’t be surprised to find part of it missing. He forced his eyelids to open anyway. The room spun, and for a moment, Dean thought he would pass out again, but eventually it steadied. When it did, he found himself looking at a guy probably a few years older than himself with the flattest eyes Dean had ever seen. They were gray and filled with nothing but a calculation that made Dean want to instinctively snarl. The impulse reminded him of Sam and he felt a deep pang of regret for ignoring the wolf’s concerns. The tire iron the man held loosely in one fist didn’t help matters. Sam was going to kick his ass when they saw each other again, and he would be right to do it.  
  
 _If_ they saw each other again.  
  
“What do you want?” Dean growled, ignoring the sharp renewal of the ache in his head.  
  
“We want the Mirror of Leanne.” A woman walked into view from a recessed staircase. She looked like she had stepped out of an office complex, from the twist of her hair to the perfect press of her pencil skirt.  
  
“Well, I don’t have it. Is there anything else, or can I go now?”  
  
The force of her blow caused Dean’s head to snap to one side. When the spots were gone from his vision and the ringing in his ears had faded enough that he could hear, he rolled his jaw to be sure it wasn’t broken.  
  
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she commented, noting the action. “We need you able to talk clearly. When we start breaking things, we’ll start with your ankles.”  
  
“Thanks,” Dean glared.  
  
She smiled. “No problem. Now -- the mirror.”  
  
“Why don’t you go ask Phil?”  
  
“We did that, obviously. Now, since you don’t seem like you intend to be reasonable about this, how about I ask you one last time nicely, and then we’ll get to the not-so-nice part? Where is the mirror?”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
The woman looked casually at the man, who smiled and lashed out with the tire iron. Dean had braced for pain in his legs, and was taken by surprise when his arm exploded in agony. He thought he heard himself scream, and there were definite tears in his lashes when he gathered himself enough to glare at his attackers again.  
  
“She said my _ankle_ , you bastard!” Not that he especially _wanted_ his ankle broken; he would need to be able to run once he figured a way out of this mess.  
  
The man shrugged. “We might need you to walk at some point.”  
  
They left him then. Dean could hear their footsteps fading up a staircase while he focused very, very hard on not jarring his newly broken arm.

~~~~~~~

At least his attackers had kindly left the light on. It only took a minute or two to establish there was no way to make a serious escape attempt, not while staying conscious at the same time, so he studied his surroundings instead. The basement was cinderblock with a poured concrete floor. A brightly patterned rug covered most of the hard surface and an easel leaned against the wall. Floor-to-ceiling metal support poles for the upper levels stood in a neat line through the center of the room. A television was on a low table in one corner near a ragged couch and posters of various teen bands covered the walls.  
  
It looked like a kid’s play area. The possibilities of what might be going on gave Dean a distinct sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.  
  
Another battered chair stood about ten feet away on the bare concrete, a pair of handcuffs lying on the seat with blood dripped and smeared on the ground beneath.  
  
He was _furious_ with Phil.  
  
Being in trouble and needing help was one thing, but not finding a freaking way to tip off the people you called was another. It was harder when dealing with near strangers, but he could have fucking _tried_.  
  
Some indeterminate amount of time passed before he heard the door at the top of the stairs open then shut again, and the creak of the steps. His back was to the staircase, and all he could do was wait and see if it was the maniac with the tire iron, or some new problem.  
  
After a few moments, no one appeared, but he could hear the distinct sound of muffled crying. Dean sighed. Things just got better and better.  
  
“Phil?” He waited but there was no response. “Phil, if that’s you, I could really use an answer.”  
  
“It’s... me.”  
  
“About freaking time. Help me get free. What the fuck is going on around here?!”  
  
Phil walked heavily around until he was in front of Dean, and then slid down to sit against the wall. He looked like he had aged twenty years. “I don’t know. I... they just showed up a few hours after you guys left. They want the mirror. They had someone watching the house, saw us take it. I guess someone tried to tail you guys but lost you just over the state line. But they were watching the estate and they recognized me. Found out where I lived.”  
  
Dean shifted subconsciously, then bit back a scream as pain tore through his arm. When he recovered, he glared at Phil. “You should have warned me.”  
  
“I couldn’t. They _made_ me call you. They were right there the entire time!”  
  
“I would have died before I led another hunter into a trap like this! Sam would have died! What the hell is _wrong_ with you?!”  
  
Phil just looked miserably around the room without answering.  
  
Dean was gathering himself to let him _really_ have it when he put two and two together. _Fuck_. “How old are they?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“The kids,” Dean asked impatiently. “Your freaking kids they’re holding hostage.”  
  
“Just one kid. My daughter, Abby. She’s thirteen.”  
  
“They have your wife too?”  
  
“No... she died awhile back. Cancer. It’s just me and Abby here.”  
  
“They hurt her?”  
  
Phil nodded, gaze fixed on the smears of blood under the empty chair. Dean swore internally but his voice was calmer when he spoke again.  
  
“Why didn’t you just tell them then? You know where the mirror is. It was no big secret where we were taking it.”  
  
“All I knew was it’s at Bobby’s. I’ve got no idea where he lives. I didn’t even know his last name. He’s just a hunter contact my dad knew before he passed. No one around here wants the mirror. I had the number from my dad’s papers. I’m not really a _hunter_ ; my dad was, and I help out where I can, but...” Phil swallowed. “When no one around here wanted to take the damn thing, I just called to see if there was any chance he could do something with it.” He sounded totally defeated. “They tried tracking your location through the phone number but only found out the county, or something. They weren’t exactly in a big hurry to share information with me.”  
  
“Do you know who they are?”  
  
Phil shook his head. Dean could see color returning to his cheeks. “I’m pretty sure they’re human. God knows why they want the mirror; it’s not like it’s useful for anything. One of the men called the woman Eva. I don’t know if she’s the one in charge, but she’s calling a lot of the shots. The other one making decisions is David. No last names, not that I’ve overheard, anyways.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind if I need to send birthday cards. The mirror is useful as a death trap. Give it as a gift, pick it back up after the funeral,” Dean said grimly, fighting the urge to twist against the cuffs again.  
  
“But you guys said it doesn’t kill everyone. I mean, your friend touched it and he seemed okay.” Phil seemed to suddenly notice Sam’s absence. “Uh... _i_ _s_ he okay?” he asked tentatively.  
  
“Sam’s fine. Though no one else involved in all of this will be once he finds out what’s happened here.”  
  
Dean started to say something else, but snapped his jaw shut when the door opened behind him again. He could hear the sounds of several people walking down the stairs. Phil stiffened, but didn’t try to move or find a weapon.  
  
“Dad!”  
  
Four men and Eva walked into view. One of them had a young teenager gripped tightly. The girl’s face was tear-streaked and a thick, bloodstained bandage was on her left arm.  
  
“I’m sure Phil here has had time to appraise you of the situation.” The speaker wasn’t Eva this time, but one of the new men. Dean thought he was probably his father’s age. The age he had been when he died anyways. Probably the other authority Phil had mentioned: David.  
  
“Yeah, it’s an exciting party you guys are throwing here. Cutting up teenage girls, beating the crap out of people tied to chairs. Good times.”  
  
“Our only interest is the mirror.”  
  
“Good luck with that. We grabbed the wrong one; easy mistake to make. You should go take a look yourself. Check under all the beds, search in all the closets. Let me know what you find.”  
  
David smiled. “Oh, we did. Abby here was kind enough to touch every single mirror in the place. Sadly, none of them were quite as promising. Rather ordinary, really.”  
  
“Son of a bitch!”  
  
Another backhand came out of nowhere and Dean’s skull rattled, his vision graying out again. He was absolutely certain he had the mother of all concussions. And if he didn’t, he sure as hell would if they kept smacking him around. Of course, he would probably be dead by then. The odd thing about this round of disorientation was the sudden, bone-deep sense of _Sam_ that flashed through his mind. He thought for an instant that he could almost _see_ Sam, standing naked and waist-deep in a clear river. He met startled hazel eyes and then he was back in a cement basement surrounded by people who probably weren’t concerned about his long-term best interest.  
  
“Keep that up,” Dean slurred, “and I won’t be able to remember my name, much less where I stashed that fucking mirror.”  
  
“Oh, I think I can jog your memory just fine.”  
  
Abby screamed as her captor dragged her forward. Phil lurched up like he was going to do something, but he was unceremoniously shoved back to the floor with a gun trained on him.  
  
“Leave her alone!” the shout came in stereo from both Dean and her father.  
  
“You want the girl safe?” David demanded. “Then answer the question. _Where is the mirror_?”  
  
“It’s at Bobby’s house,” Dean gritted.  
  
“Clever. Where is that, exactly?”  
  
Dean clenched his teeth and glared. If looks could kill, David and his associates would be ash. Instead, he looked bored and made a quick motion. Abby screamed again and blood stained the front of her green t-shirt as one of the men opened up a long cut just below her collarbone. Two of the others were wrestling a cursing, struggling Phil back to the ground.  
  
“There’s still a lot of skin to peel off of this kid,” David pointed out calmly. “And if one isn’t enough for you, I’m sure we can go out and find a few more kids to loosen your tongue.”  
  
“Go ahead,” Dean said as dispassionately as he could manage. “She isn’t mine.”  
  
“You flinched more than she did,” Eva observed coolly. “You haven’t got the stomach to sit there and watch us carve up a child.”  
  
“But you’ve got the stomach to do it?!”  
  
She looked unimpressed by Dean’s outrage. “It wouldn’t be the first. Or even the tenth. Give us the location.”  
  
Dean searched her face, and then the faces of the men standing with her. He saw nothing in any of them to indicate she was exaggerating even a little. Desperately apologizing to Bobby in the privacy of his own mind, Dean gave a half nod. “They go free.”  
  
Eva and David exchanged a look before David spoke again.  
  
“Excuse us for not being so trusting of your better nature, but I think they can come with us. We will all take a nice road trip out to pick up our property. When we have the mirror, you can all go free.” His smile was as deeply insincere as Dean’s own.  
  
But at least this bought him a little time.

  
  
**Chapter Eight**

“People in their handling of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed.  
If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.”  
                                                                                   ~Lao Tzu

  
Within thirty minutes, Dean, the Wallaces, and seven or eight of David and Eva’s crew were out on the road heading for South Dakota. Dean was in the back of the Impala. He had seen them escort Phil and Abby to the dark van that was now traveling behind them. The only concession to Dean’s broken arm was that now he was handcuffed in the front. Even the slightest tilt of his head had him fighting nausea, and the movement of anything else jarred the broken bone in his arm. Struggle was completely out of the question. His ankles were roped together anyway, so even if he somehow managed to escape, he wasn’t going to actually get away.  
  
Dean drifted in and out of consciousness. He wanted to pass out and stay that way, but if he didn’t answer to his name, the goon sitting with him would shove his shoulder, and the screaming was starting to make his throat sore. They wouldn’t let him sleep because of the concussion. Dean wished they would let him drift at least a little deeper.  
  
He kept having dreams of Sam. They weren’t good dreams. In them, Sam was frantic and scared. He was moving quickly and with purpose, but too much of what was happening was misty and faint. And then Dean would be jarred awake and the cycle would start again. At one point, Dean imagined Sam was interrogating him, demanding to know where he was, where he was going. _Bobby’s_ , Dean tried to answer, but he didn’t know if the dream Sam understood. Dean hated to see him upset, but it was better than being awake in the car with the grinding pain of a broken arm and the murderously cold presence of his kidnappers.  
  
Drivers were traded off occasionally, and at one point someone held a bottle of water for him to drink from. He needed assistance to hobble out of the car and take a piss, a humiliation he endured by clenching his teeth and imagining all of the things he was going to do to those people as soon he was able to act. He wasn’t injured in his daydreams, and a shotgun and his boot knife featured prominently.  
  
“Wake up. We’re here.”  
  
Dean opened his eyes and looked out the window. The Impala was parked in front of Bobby’s house on the patchy grass Bobby generously called a yard. On the porch, Dean could see a blanket tossed over what looked like a corpse and one of the front windows busted out. The door stood open and two unsmiling thugs stood there glaring at him.  
  
“Trouble with the locks?” Dean asked politely.  
  
Rough hands dragged him from the car, making his head swim with agony, and he bit his lips bloody trying to not cry out this time. When he refocused, he was on his knees on the weathered wood of Bobby’s front porch. A rough hand grabbed his chin and forced his head up. “That body there? Before we’re done here, you’re going to pay for that death.”  
  
Dean jerked his head away. “You didn’t tell me you were going to send men ahead to break into the place. Why the fuck am I being blamed for shit you never asked me about?”  
  
David gave him an angry look, and then strode into the house without another word. Phil and Abby were standing a few feet away. Abby had the glazed look of someone who wasn’t really seeing reality anymore, and Phil had fresh blood drying at the corner of his mouth. His hands were cuffed behind him and he wore the same sort of rope hobble on his ankles that Dean had.  
  
One of the men moved like he was going to haul Dean up, but Dean beat him to it. He hastily scrambled to his feet before the douchebag could try picking him up using his bad arm.  
  
Eva was standing in front of him. “The mirror, now.”  
  
She didn’t have to clarify her threat again; behind her, one of the other men had taken hold of Abby. The girl seemed barely aware of her peril, or anything else going on, but Phil’s face was agonized and pleading.  
  
“Yeah, fine,” Dean muttered. “It’s downstairs.”  
  
Stairs were another fun adventure for Dean. The length in the rope binding his ankles together was just enough that he could take the steps one at a time, but the concussion had his balance off, and every movement sent lightning bolts of agony lancing through his arm. He ended up shuffling down at a miserably slow pace, biting off curses as he went. He was only four steps from the bottom when one of the men stumbled into him and Dean fell hard the last few feet. He didn’t land on the broken arm, but he didn’t see how the pain could have been any worse and the world whited out.  
  
Sam was there again, in his mind. A fierce _Hold on_ resonated in his skull and then Sam was gone and Dean was blinking again in the basement light.  
  
The residual pain from his arm distracted him from the new pain in his ankle, until the goon tried to get him back up. He fell immediately, the wounded ankle refusing to hold his weight. Dean wasn’t even a little interested in inspecting the damage. He wasn’t likely to survive the next half hour anyway. He was sorry about Abby though, and Phil; he wasn’t really a hunter in the first place and he shouldn’t have been dragged into any of this from the get-go. Dean glanced over to where the man was holding as stoic of an expression as he could, but his gaze kept drifting to where his daughter stood like a rag doll in the grip of one of their attackers, eyes glazed and expression blank.  
  
A short nod from Eva indicated Dean could stay where he was collapsed on the floor, to his vast relief.  
  
“Where is it?” David demanded. “And let’s not play games. The girl can die fast, or she can take a few days. It’s your choice.”  
  
“Not even pretending anymore?” Dean asked tiredly.  
  
David shrugged. “You aren’t a stupid man.”  
  
“There’s a china cabinet in that room over there. The mirror is behind it, wrapped in a quilt.”  
  
Eva was looking around with an expression that suggested she was calculating a dollar value for what she was seeing.  
  
“This is... remarkable,” she breathed.  
  
“You people are bigger monsters than anything I’ve ever hunted,” Dean said flatly.  
  
“One man’s monster is another man’s god,” David shrugged.  
  
“Most of us don’t worship our pocketbooks.”  
  
Eva snorted and walked over to him as the men returned from the room carrying the large quilt-wrapped mirror. “What planet have you been living on?”  
  
David nodded at one of the men’s hesitant look, indicating they should remove the quilt. In just a matter of minutes, the Mirror of Leanne stood in all its reflective glory against the wall.  
  
Eva walked over to the mirror to examine it. She slowly waved a hand in front of the surface and watched in awe as the reflection remained the same. The mirror showed the basement and all of its clutter, but the battered captives and their attackers were invisible. “This is an incredible enchantment.”  
  
David turned to one of the men. “Go get the plastic sheeting from the car. Tell the rest of the men to hide the other vehicles somewhere out of sight in the scrap. We’re gone in ten minutes.”  
  
The man nodded and left, taking the stairs two at a time.  
  
Dean cocked his head as the sound of shuffling came from upstairs. Dean could tell that David had heard it too because the man’s brows drew together and he took a step forward, as if he was going to go investigate.  
  
“David!” Eva called. “We should test it. Just to make sure, for the buyer’s sake.” She was smiling, but it was a dark pleasure in her eyes.  
  
David nodded shortly and grabbed Abby from the man holding her. He dragged her unresisting form towards the glass.  
  
“No!” Phil yelled. The second henchman in the basement pulled his gun and stepped toward Phil as the first guard advanced forward as well. Dean finally saw an opening. Without giving himself time to consider the consequences, he dropped onto his back and rolled toward the mirror, screaming as his body weight pressed against the broken bone. He fought the pain back long enough to kick out at David with both feet. The unexpected attack caused him to stagger into Eva and they both fell forward, throwing their arms out instinctively to break their fall as they slammed smack into the glass.  
  
For a moment, the only sound in the basement was Dean’s harsh panting. In the distance, Dean thought he heard a short scream, but his attention was consumed by the tableau playing out before him. Both of the guards, whom Dean had started thinking of as Thug One and Thug Two, were frozen as well, staring at their bosses and looking highly uncertain. David had scrambled to his feet, but Eva was crouched in front of the glass. Both of them had their gazes locked onto the mirror.  
  
From Dean’s angle on the floor, he couldn’t see Eva and David’s reflections. He wasn’t sorry about that, though; especially a few seconds later, when Eva began to scream.  
  
Things moved quickly after that. David never made a sound at all, just ripped the gun out of Thug Two’s hand, pressed it neatly beneath his own chin and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter spattered all over Abby and she began to breathe in great ragged breaths. Dean was glad she was more aware of what was going on, but wished she had better timing. Eva shook her head and scrambled backwards until she hit the wall. Once her back hit the rough stone, she began slamming her head back again and again, mumbling under her breath. Dean wasn’t inclined to stop her, even if he was in any shape to do so.  
  
Meanwhile, the thugs had managed to tear their gazes away from whatever the mirror had shown, and it must have been truly awful because Dean couldn’t imagine what could put those kinds of expressions on the faces of men who had no problem torturing children to death. They had realized that things were quickly going south for them in the basement and both ran for the stairs.  
  
Dean relaxed against the cool stone of the floor. He knew they would return soon and he didn’t know how much fight he had left in him. There was still a buyer out there willing to pay who-knew-how much for the Mirror of Leanne. As soon as the remaining men gathered their nerve, they would still want the prize to sell and they weren’t going to want to leave any witnesses. But Dean didn’t know what in the hell he could do about it, concussed, crippled, unarmed and bound.  
  
On the landing above them, it sounded like a violent scuffle had broken out, catching all of Dean’s attention. Screams and snarling filled the air and a crimson spray of blood arced down to spatter on the floor seconds before a body followed it, landing limply with a meaty thump. It was one of the men who had been guarding them. The right side of his throat was a gaping ruin that spilled a torrent of fresh blood out across the floor. He looked like he was trying to choke out words, but he had only moments to live, if that.  
  
Seconds later, the other man scrambled down the stairs, looking desperate. He lunged for David’s corpse and tried to wrench the gun from his cooling fingers, but before he could manage, a taller shape leaped easily down the last few steps and crossed the room to him. The newcomer grabbed the man by his throat as if his clawing struggle was inconsequential. No one in the basement missed the distinctive crunch of his throat being crushed before he was tossed heavily aside to kick and fight for air until he finally lay still in a puddle of his employer’s blood. Off alone by the wall, Eva’s struggle had also ceased, the ruin of the back of her head hidden by her heavy, dark hair and the dimness of the corner.  
  
“Sam. Sam, _how_...”  
  
Sam stalked over to him and dropped a bloody jangle of keys onto the floor. “Stole it.”  
  
He was staring down at Dean with a glazed expression in his eyes.  
  
Phil had jerked from his frozen stance at the sound of Dean’s voice, staring at Sam with wide, horrified eyes. Dean supposed in a distant sort of way that Phil’s reaction wasn’t so odd. Blood was smeared on Sam’s clothes and drying in dark streaks on his hands and forearms. His lower face was a wet mask of gore and Dean had no doubts about what had happened to the first guard’s throat.  
  
Even while he struggled to sit up, Sam absently ran his tongue over his lips, clearing some of the blood away. The glazed expression in his eyes faded somewhat as his eyes focused on Dean. Sam gave him an assessing look, then carefully eased him into a more comfortable position against the wall.  
  
When that was done, Dean had barely drawn in a breath to start asking questions before Sam’s mouth descended hard on his own, cutting him off. Sam didn’t seem to be so much kissing him as trying to fuse the two of them together at the lips. Dean couldn’t do anything but kiss back, even the heavy metallic flavor of the dead man’s blood barely registering against the overwhelming presence of _Sam_. Dean’s pain became secondary to their reunion but it was short-lived. Phil’s voice sliced in, jarring Dean out of the moment and causing a deep, rumbling growl from Sam.  
  
“What the fuck kind of monster _are_ you?!”  
  
Before Dean could start yelling about ingratitude, and Sam could maybe start something worse, the wolf tensed and Dean could hear the familiar vibrating rumble of Bobby’s truck pulling up to the house.

  
  
**Chapter Nine**

“Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, but I'd try[](http://statcounter.com/tumblr/) a revolver first”  
                                                                     ~Josh Billings

  
Things were handled in short order after that. Bobby had the soul of a drill sergeant buried somewhere inside and he took in the tableau with a sweeping glance and discarded the immediate questions in favor of getting things sorted out.  
  
After establishing that no one was likely to die in the next ten minutes and pinning Sam firmly in place with one hard look, he asked the blood-spattered Abby if she was okay. When she nodded, albeit a bit shakily, he sent her to the guest bathroom to shower. Phil, who was still casting horrified looks at Sam, was white as a sheet and also spattered with blood. Bobby ordered him to the other shower with instructions not to come out until he had pulled himself together for his daughter.  
  
With the strangers dealt with for the moment, Bobby established that the cops were unlikely to be on their way and none of the dead were folks the human race would miss. He ordered Sam to help him haul bodies. The wolf bristled and flat out refused, but Dean kicked him with his good leg and gave him a pained glare.  
  
“What about the Wallaces, Sam?” Dean asked. “They shouldn’t have to come out and trip over corpses.”  
  
“Screw them,” Sam growled. “You aren’t leaving my sight.”  
  
“I can’t even stand up! I’ll be right here on the same fucking step when you get done. But Abby is only thirteen and she’s seen enough in the last three days. Help Bobby drag the freaking bodies out and then you can hover all you want.”  
  
Sam turned his frustration on Bobby, who met him head on. “There’s a freezer out in the shed. Line it with the trash bags on the shelf and let’s get the dead weight out and packed away.”  
  
“They won’t all fit."  
  
“You haven’t tried.” Bobby offered a smile that was mostly teeth, and Sam caved under the weight of Bobby and Dean’s gaze.  
  
As soon as he was gone, Dean looked up at Bobby. “What are you going to do with frozen bad guys?”  
  
“Wood chipper,” Bobby grunted, crouching down to get a look at Dean’s pupils. Dean made a face and turned his head away, hissing in pain when Bobby responded by grabbing a fistful of his hair to keep his head still.  
  
“You use bodies as mulch?!”  
  
“Got a lake some ways back out in the woods. It’s a good size and there’s a dirt road that goes back there for some of the locals that like a quiet bit of fishing. A body every other day or so chipped and tossed in for the fish causes no problem and disappears quietly. As long as no one searches the place before I get everything moved off and scrubbed down, we should be fine. Always has been before.” He moved his unexpectedly gentle hands to probe Dean’s fractured arm.  
  
Dean sucked in a sharp breath but forced himself to hold still. “You have a lot of call to move bodies that way?”  
  
“More every year.” Bobby made a cursory inspection on the badly sprained ankle then sat back, satisfied that Dean didn’t have anything obvious that needed critical care. “You pissing blood or have anything worse than this under the clothes?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Fine. Then tell me what the hell is going on before tall, dark and moody stalks back in here and gets his attitude in the way of my explanation.”  
  
Dean sighed and filled Bobby in on the whole story.

~~~~~~~

After Dean caught him up to date, Bobby left to drop clean clothes, left from God-knew-who, outside of the bathroom for Abby. He also provided an equally clean but more easily explained set for Phil. He looked tired when he came back. Sam brushed by him as Bobby made his way back to Dean with an ankle brace and some crutches he found in a closet. The wolf held himself tightly and didn’t say anything, just grabbed another body and hauled it outside. Bobby shook his head.  
  
“How’s Abby?” Dean asked, when Sam was gone again. Bobby sat down and started wrapping Dean’s ankle with an ACE bandage and an ice pack.  
  
“I could hear her crying through the door over the sound of the water. Didn’t think a strange man barging in would help matters any, though. She’ll come out when she’s ready and her daddy can take care of her.”  
  
Dean winced as Bobby tightened the wrap. “I’m not sure Phil is going to be up to much comforting.”  
  
“Then I’ll make some hot cocoa and a grilled cheese for the girl and send Phil out to the shed to help Sam. That will solve two problems.”  
  
“Only if you’re looking to adopt,” Dean grumbled. “I don’t think Sam is in any kind of mood to put up with Phil’s attitude for long. He might stuff him in the freezer with the rest of the stiffs.”  
  
“My point.”  
  
Bobby’s fastened the ends of the bandage and Dean wiggled his toes to check circulation. “I’m sorry about the house. I just couldn’t think of what else to do th--”  
  
Bobby cut off his apology with a wave of his hand. “Wasn’t anything else you could do that wasn’t even riskier. Lucky for you, Sam was here, considering he should have still been blissfully camping and you had the car.”  
  
Bobby’s expression was suspicious but he didn’t ask any questions about Sam’s miraculous appearance on the scene. Well, he asked one.  
  
“He _stole_ a car?”  
  
Dean shrugged and winced at the movement. “I didn’t get the details.”  
  
“Your little wolf is growing up,” Bobby grunted.  
  
“He’s hardly _little_.”  
  
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Dean looked everywhere but at the silvered glass not even five feet to his right. He remembered the horror and fear on David and Eva’s faces before... before. He had killed a lot of things in his life. Some looked human, some _were_ human when it was a matter of life or death, but he had never killed anyone like that.  
  
Bobby caught the avoidance and nudged one of the corpses. That was the other area of the room Dean wasn’t looking.  
  
“You’re story had a few holes in it. Sam didn’t tear through these.”  
  
“No.”  
  
Bobby nodded, putting the scenario together with the ease of long practice. “Your doing?”  
  
“Yeah. I kicked them, they landed on it, then they died.”  
  
“You okay with that?”  
  
“They weren’t the first people I killed Bobby, and they were trying to kill me. Plus Abby and Phil. Yeah, I’m okay with it.”  
  
But Bobby heard something in his voice that kept his attention on Dean’s face until Dean had to look away. The silence hung for a moment before Dean spoke again.  
  
“Sam touched it.” Bobby sucked in a sharp breath but said nothing. “He touched it when we were getting it down. He says he’s fine. He says wolves don’t think like humans do. And he _seems_ fine. But he isn’t really a wolf, and I saw their faces... What if this is going to happen to him? What if in a few days I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and find he’s slit his goddamned wrists in the bathroom because he touched the fucking thing and there’s _nothing_ I can do to stop it?”  
  
“You done?”  
  
Dean nodded shortly, still not meeting his eyes in the dim light of the staircase.  
  
“First of all, Sam’s got no reason to lie to you. He _looks_ human, but that’s only part of his nature and you know it. Maybe Leanne’s curse _can’t_ touch him like it touches humans.”  
  
“He said it showed him things, Bobby,” Dean hissed, “that it felt weird and--”  
  
“ _Secondly_ ,” Bobby raised his voice to cut Dean off, “Leanne’s curse only shows people their true natures. It sticks the knife in and twists, but if you can accept what you see, then the curse is defeated. Now Sam’s a wolf, and wolves, like most wild things, are a secretive, shifty bunch. Especially the valley wolves, who have more secrets to keep than most. But one of them told me once when I was hanging out there a long, long time ago that he thought the biggest problem humans had was that we were as much strangers to ourselves as we are to others of our kind. It baffled him. Now Sam says he’s fine. I’d be inclined to believe him. And lastly -- even if what he saw in the mirror was news to him, maybe there just wasn’t anything that troubled him in his reflection. You know Sam better than I do, what do you think?”  
  
Dean was saved from answering by Sam’s irritated return and his insistence that they get Dean out of the chill of the basement and back upstairs where he could suffer somewhere more comfortable.

  
  
**Chapter Ten**

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."  
                                                                  ~Dr. Seuss

  
Phil and Abby left early the next morning to stay with one of his wife’s relatives in California for awhile. Phil wouldn’t let Abby within touching distance of Sam. The wolf ignored the somewhat wild looks Phil kept casting in his direction, but Dean bristled every time he caught one, and finally Bobby sent the Winchesters to the ground floor bedroom on a shallow pretext just to prevent another outbreak of violence while he got the Wallaces shuffled off.  
  
Abby actually seemed to be handling things better than her dad was. Once safe, with the blood washed off, the bodies gone and all the adults reasonably calm and reassuring, she had perked up, eaten and acted... fine. Bobby doubted she had slept much and there was a wide gulf between acting fine and being fine, but she was a tough kid and Phil seemed determined to make sure she got whatever help she needed. He told Bobby he planned to clean out his bank account and start over somewhere. The family history around Cloverdale wasn’t worth the risk if anyone decided to pop back in and demand answers about the mirror or the people who had come after it.  
  
Sometime during the night, the Rogers mansion had mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground.  
  
After having his arm set, Dean slept the sleep of the heavily drugged during a long night while Sam and Bobby scrubbed blood from floors and walls. Sam had been reluctant to leave Dean’s side, but he compromised by leaving the bedroom door open so he could hear Dean if he stirred, and stayed up with Bobby answering questions and filling in holes in Dean’s story while they worked.  
  
Bobby just grunted when Sam got to the part about turning up at the house and fighting his way to Dean. Bobby had seen the bodies and knew exactly how violent the confrontations had been, but as far as he was concerned, the people who needed to live had lived, and the people who didn’t had died. That Sam had used his hands instead of a gun... well, Bobby had been living with the reality of Sam’s people for longer than Dean had. He didn’t have any illusions about what was under his skin. People who went after a werewolf’s mate, or a hunter’s partner, should expect to get torn limb from limb.  
  
He was a little concerned Dean was having more trouble with it than that, but the eye-roll Bobby got when he tried to confront Dean about it convinced him that it was something else bothering the boy. _Something_ was preying on his mind, and Bobby didn’t think he was upset about the people he had killed in the basement. But Dean wasn’t talking, and Bobby wasn’t a therapist.  
  
He gave his bedroom up to his houseguests because it was on the ground floor and the attached bathroom had a tub. It would be awhile before Dean was able to get up and down stairs easily or stand more than a couple of minutes at a time.  
  
He sent out feelers in his network of contacts to make sure no one was showing any undue interest in him, Sam and Dean or the Wallaces, then settled in to putting his house back in order.  
  
And dealing with the bodies, of course. Fish had to eat too.

~~~~~~~

For a week, Dean’s sleep was restless and broken when he wasn’t drugged outright. Out loud, he blamed his grouchiness and the shadows under his eyes on his injuries, the lack of exercise and the pain medication Sam and Bobby keep forcing on him. But privately he knew it was really the dreams to blame. The same old nightmares he had been having for awhile. Dreams of failure. Sam’s lifeless body and empty eyes insisting it was his fault, it was something in him...  
  
Knowing that the Mirror was only two stories beneath him was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. One look and he would know. No more nightmares, no more wondering. Sam had looked, and he was fine.  
  
But others weren’t. And the looks on their faces before they turned their weapons on themselves were seared into his memory. They were child-torturing monsters, though, and they deserved every inch of what they got. But the Mirror didn’t just kill monsters, plenty of seemingly good people had been destroyed by it in their time, too. The mental debate kept Dean short-tempered and torn.  
  
Finally, Dean couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been raised to weigh evidence and take decisive actions. He waited until the rhythm of Sam’s breathing was deep and steady, then slipped carefully out from underneath Sam’s arm and limped down the stairs. He made his way into the impenetrable blackness of Bobby’s basement careful to listen for footsteps from above. When the house remained silent as death, he flipped the switch and winced in the sudden harsh light.  
  
In the week since the disaster, Bobby had embraced the ‘hiding in plain sight’ idea that Mick Rogers had tried for the Mirror of Leanne but with a twist. Snorting at the elaborate deception the other hunter had used to keep the mirror safe, Bobby had opted for something simpler.  
  
On the wall directly across from the bottom step was a huge painting. A cheap scene of a stag hunt -- something a person could believe might have caught Bobby’s eye at a flea market and been toted home to be hung out of the way and forgotten. Its elaborate frame was tackily accented with a chintzy gold paint, and the entire ensemble was hardly worth a second glance. But Dean knew what the cheap veneer and second-rate canvas disguised, and it was hardly a minute before he found a place to dig his nails into and peel back the picture that had been glued onto the glass.  
  
Bobby’s total lack of respect for the mirror caused Dean to smile despite himself. It was good to know that some things in the universe were dependable, and Bobby being _Bobby_ was one of them.  
  
When the canvas had been discarded, Dean stared into the silvered glass with its thick, yellow streaks of dried glue and it’s clean reflection of everything in the basement except him. He steeled his nerve, then reached out and pressed the steady fingers of his good hand to glass that felt like cool water against his skin. He stepped back quickly, caught a bare foot on the loose rug and went down. The fall tore his gaze away from the mirror and sent pain rocketing through his damaged body, but despite the agony his chin jerked up immediately so he could refocus on the glass. A phrase echoed in his mind: _I have to look_. Sam’s insistence from the Rogers house when he had touched the mirror accidentally. Dean had almost gone out of his mind with fear, wanting to drag Sam away before he could see his reflection, to keep him safe. But Sam had refused and Dean understood now, because he _had_ to look too, the compulsion was unbelievable.  
  
And when Dean did look, he felt... surprise. The slow resolution of his reflection in the mirror wasn’t unexpected, having seen it before at Sam’s side. But like Sam’s, the image wasn’t exactly his. Or rather, it wasn’t the reflection that any other mirror would have shown. There was more sharpness to his features; a cast that made him look almost predatory, but also... resolved. There was something in that glint of eye and set of lips that spoke of loyalty and a ferocity that stilled Dean’s breath. He could also detect hints of passion, gentleness, and something effusive he could only call _grace_. Dean couldn’t point to any one feature that said these things to him, but he _felt_ them with a soul deep honesty that left room for no doubt.  
  
There were other chords as well, other things, colder in nature. In _his_ nature. Jealousy, anger, pettiness, guilt. But rather than discordant notes they were just part of the weave of the whole. Capacities for acts of great darkness; currents and potentials that raised the hair on Dean’s neck and turned his heart to ice. But like all of the other extremes, they were only possibilities, and he could embrace them for that, even though some of them were so far remote from what Dean had consciously known about himself he could only call them inhuman.  
  
But the mirror had more to show him and his gaze slid down until he met the bright green eyes of a wolf. It was translucent where the human form was solid, but no less recognizable. Dean felt little surprise. He had known Sam in both of his forms in the mirror’s reflection, and even though he had never seen this animal before, he knew it for his own image as sincerely as he had ever recognized himself. In the Mirror of Leanne, a person could not help but know themselves in all their natures. Besides, Sam had always insisted they were literally born to be to together. If it was in Sam’s nature to walk in both worlds, Dean could hardly expect to find his own any different.  
  
He stayed in silent communion with the mirror until the images slowly faded from sight. Once they were gone, he drew a deep breath, feeling like a weight had been lifted from him. He knew why some people killed themselves immediately after looking in the mirror, and he knew why some lingered for years. But he understood Sam’s calmness when he had seen his own reflection now, because he felt it himself. There was nothing in the mirror that Dean couldn’t accept, neither the darkness nor the light. He and Sam were as they were intended to be, and he would no more fail Sam than Sam would fail him. By accident or fate maybe, but by no intrinsic flaw.  
  
Dean turned to hobble back upstairs and though no sound had given away his presence, Dean wasn’t surprised to see Sam sitting on the bare wooden steps waiting for him.  
  
“The nightmares,” Sam said quietly in the dimness of the basement light.  
  
“I needed to see something,” Dean answered honestly.  
  
Sam nodded. “And now?”  
  
“Now?” Dean moved closer until their knees bumped. “Now I think I’ve got it worked out.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
Dean smiled, feeling genuinely at peace for the first time in four years. “No. But I’ve got you to kick my ass for any backsliding.”  
  
Sam looked hesitant, and then, “You talk in your sleep.”  
  
Dean thought of the long ride to Bobby’s in the back of the Impala. Drifting in and out of consciousness, thinking of Sam. Sam in the forest. Sam demanding to know where he was going.  
  
Sam in a hotel room weeks ago, half-awake and mumbling about things he shouldn’t have known anything about. Dean thought about coincidences.  
  
Sam showing up to rescue him just in the nick of time.  
  
“And in my dreams?” Dean asked, meeting his eyes.  
  
Sam dodged the question. “You didn’t fail your dad, Dean. He could have called you; he didn’t. We’ll never know why. Maybe he didn’t expect what he found in that house, or maybe he just thought he could handle it. It was a stupid decision and it killed him. _His decision_ , Dean; no failing of yours.”  
  
“How much can you see?”  
  
“Not much,” Sam hesitated. “It’s nothing I plan, it just... happens. Sometimes our dreams drift together.”  
  
“Have you seen the nightmare? All of it -- the one I keep having?”  
  
Sam shook his head. “Only bits. I’ve seen others, though. You didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I thought if I gave you more time, if I waited for you to be ready, then we could talk about it. I waited too long if this,” Sam nodded towards the mirror at Dean’s back, “was a logical step.”  
  
“I’m fine.” Dean echoed what Sam had told him after his own exposure to the mirror, feeling its truth to his bones. “I’m fine, Sam.”  
  
“I knew you would be. I _know_ you, even though your actions confuse the hell out of me sometimes. But you didn’t know you would be okay. This could have killed you. Why didn’t you at least talk to me first?!” The wolf sounded more bewildered than anything.  
  
Dean swallowed. “In my nightmare, it’s my dad that falls, but it’s not his body I turn over. It’s you. It’s always you. And you’re dead and it feels _so real_ , Sam. I’ve been having this dream for months now. It doesn’t feel like a dream. I just... got all messed up, in my head. I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
“It really isn’t, Sam.”  
  
“No. But you’re fine, and I’m fine, and the bad guys are all dead. I don’t think the dream is about me, Dean. I think you still feel guilty about your dad and I think you’re right, you got all screwed up inside. We need a freaking break.”  
  
Dean nodded and there was silence between them for a few minutes. With the Mirror’s enthralling effects fading quickly, Dean’s ankle was aching fiercely and he really wanted to get off his feet and get his hands on Sam and do some reaffirming of their bond. They always communicated better with actions rather than words, but he wasn’t sure how to breach the space between them.  
  
“Your dad loved you,” Sam almost whispered. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to carry this. Let it go.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Let me help.”  
  
Dean smiled, feeling the unnatural tension spin away like candy floss. Everything wasn’t better, but it was in the open at least. He didn’t know what to think about Sam’s revelations about the shared dreams and visions, but he’d had enough mystical crap for one night and it could wait a few hours.  
  
“Help me back up these stairs and I’ll give you detailed directions on how you can take my mind off this entirely.”

~~~~~~~

Back in their borrowed bedroom with the door safely shut and the house quiet, Sam flipped on the overhead light and looked Dean over, shaking his head.  
  
“What?’ Dean asked, hobbling over to the bed and slumping down.  
  
“You’ve got a busted arm, an ankle that barely supports your weight, and you were seeing double until just the other day. I think you’re a tease, promising me things you can’t deliver on.”  
  
“Me? A _tease_? You’re wounding my pride, Sam. Hitting way below the belt there.”  
  
“Hitting isn’t what I was hoping would be happening below the belt.”  
  
“I’ve got a plan. It’s a good plan, spectacular even. I’ve been planning it for at least the last five minutes,” Dean announced in a tone of great satisfaction.  
  
Sam moved over to sit beside him on the bed. “That does sound impressive. That’s at least four minutes and thirty seconds more planning than usually goes into this.”  
  
“Hey, I’m all about spontaneous. And I don’t remember you doing any complaining.” He followed Sam’s movement as the wolf tugged his t-shirt over his head and dropped it casually to the carpet.  
  
“I’m not complaining.” Sam started on his pants. “Just wondering if you were planning on actually giving me any directions or if I just need to entertain myself.” He cupped the bulge in his jeans suggestively, stroking one thumb along the zipper.  
  
Dean swallowed. “Why don’t you quit dragging your feet and help me get my clothes off too. Then I’ll give you all the direction you need.”  
  
Sam kicked his own jeans off onto the floor and carefully worked to get the oversized t-shirt Dean was wearing over his head and off his cast.  
  
“Pants too?” Dean asked hopefully.  
  
“I think if I help you with the pants, this little experiment of yours might end before it gets started.” Sam raised the shirt to his face and inhaled deeply.  
  
Dean shoved the waistband of his sweatpants down with one hand and kicked them off. “You know you can get that fresh over here?”  
  
Sam smiled and let the shirt fall. “It’s different; the shirt smells like you’re all sleepy.”  
  
“That’s better than me all horny?” Dean asked incredulously.  
  
“Not better, different. Like an appetizer.”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes and piled the pillows up until he was happy, then lay back against them.  
  
Sam watched. “Your big plan?”  
  
Dean grinned and patted one thigh invitingly.  
  
Sam fished the lube out from where it was tucked between the frame and the mattress and crawled up beside Dean. “I’m not sure this strikes me as the _best_ plan.”  
  
Dean twisted fingers in Sam’s hair and dragged him in to kiss. He bit Sam’s lower lip until he could taste blood, then let him go. “Are you doubting the genius of my plan?”  
  
Sam licked his mouth, eyes darkening. “Maybe your ability to follow through.”  
  
He ran fingers meaningfully over Dean’s cast.  
  
“All I have to do is lie here and enjoy; you’re going to do all the work.” Dean gave him an encouraging look.  
  
“It’s your pain,” Sam shrugged. He popped the cap off of the lube and smeared some on his fingers, a look of great concentration on his face as he reached behind himself.  
  
“Let me do that.” Dean tried to sit back up, but Sam just put one hand flat on his chest, holding him down.  
  
“No. You’re just lying there, remember?”  
  
“At least let me watch!”  
  
Sam smirked.  
  
“You _suck_ , Sam!”  
  
“This is _your_ plan, I’m just following directions. Now shut up; I’m concentrating.” He swung one leg over so he was straddling Dean’s waist and reached behind himself to steady Dean’s cock. Dean drew in a sharp breath when Sam touched him, but stayed obediently quiet. He ran his free hand up Sam’s thigh, groping his ass appreciatively and sliding fingers through the lube around the tight hole. He slipped one in without warning and Sam hissed.  
  
“Your hand is in the way, Dean,” he growled.  
  
“Are you sure?” Dean asked, enjoying the play of muscle against his hand and the shifting expressions on Sam’s face.  
  
“I’m sure that if you don’t move it, this isn’t going to end the way you want.”  
  
Dean’s smile took on more of an edge. “You mean you’re gonna come? Is that it, Sam?”  
  
He slid a second finger in and Sam’s expression took on a new tension. “ _Dean_...”  
  
“I don’t mind if you want to go ahead and come; won’t interfere with my pleasure at all.”  
  
“It will if I roll over and go to sleep afterwards,” Sam pointed out, squirming.  
  
Dean slipped a third in beside the other two. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Sam? Not when I’m injured; not when you can make me feel so much better...”  
  
Sam whined faintly, sweat beading up on his skin.  
  
Dean took pity on him and pulled his fingers free, taking a grip on Sam’s hip instead. “Better?”  
  
In answer, Sam drew a deep breath and sank back, taking Dean’s cock into his body one slow inch at a time until he was seated firmly against Dean’s skin.  
  
“This is better,” Sam breathed, after letting his body adjust for a few moments. He started a slow rocking, keeping his movement easy and controlled.  
  
Dean was patient with it for awhile, but grew restless when Sam showed no signs of changing his pace. “Is that the best you can do, Sam? Now which one of us is being a tease?” A sudden thought occurred to him. “You’re okay with this, right? I mean, what you were saying before, about being comfortable and all.”  
  
“You’re making me really sorry I told you about that, Dean,” Sam growled, frustration giving his voice more of an edge than usual. “I’m trying not to mess up your arm.”  
  
“Fuck my arm,” Dean hissed back. He squirmed so he could get better leverage to thrust, then went sheet white as a bolt of pain almost killed his erection an instant before Sam’s hands landed on his shoulders, pinning him firmly in place.  
  
“How about you just lie here and let me drive? Remember the plan?”  
  
“It was a good plan,” Dean said weakly.  
  
“The best,” Sam replied, leaning down to devour Dean’s mouth in a way that had him completely distracted from pain until his body recovered.  
  
When he sat back up, Sam’s movements were tighter and more focused. Dean let his hand roam over Sam’s skin wherever he could reach, frustrated with the broken bone and heavy, cumbersome cast. He felt himself growing close and knew Sam was aware of it. He had tried to explain it to Dean once, how he knew. The changes in Dean’s scent, his temperature, even the color of his eyes; all things the wolf absorbed without thought. Dean had a simpler way to read Sam, all he had to do was to listen for a certain hitch in his breath and he knew.  
  
“You want--” Dean reached for Sam’s cock, meaning to wrap his fingers around its swollen length and help him over the edge, but the wolf shook his head emphatically.  
  
“No, I want--” His words cut off with a gasp and ropes of pearly come streaked across Dean’s belly. Sam leaned over him, getting his breathing under control before raising his head enough to meet Dean’s gaze with a sly smile and pupils so wide the hazel was just a thin ring around the black. “I bet you want to shove me down and have your way with me now.”  
  
Dean laughed despite the circumstances. “You’ve been reading in the wrong library section again. Besides, I thought I was already having my way with you?”  
  
Sam nodded, expression intent. “But not the way you’d like.”  
  
“I’m liking this just fine. I like everything we do together.” He brushed loose hair back behind Sam’s ear. “You about ready to finish up?”  
  
Sam nodded again and blinked sweat out of his eyes. “I shouldn’t have let you go alone to that meeting.”  
  
Sam’s gaze was fierce as he began to move again, pulling Dean’s body closer to that fine, bright edge he could feel getting closer with every roll of Sam’s hips.  
  
“ _Sam._..”  
  
“Never again, Dean,” Sam asserted fiercely, keeping Dean’s gaze trapped with his own.  
  
“Never again,” Dean gasped in agreement, as the edge rolled over him, Sam’s hand squeezing his own, an anchor in the sudden rush of release.

~~~~~~~

“Where I come from, a man who extorts promises out of other men during sex isn’t considered a good date,” Dean grumbled, while Sam wiped them both down.  
  
Sam rolled his eyes and tossed the cloth on the pile of dirty clothes. “This again? Where I come from, I would be well within my rights to question your ability to lead after that stunt, and kick your ass for the right to be Alpha. You want to see how it looks from my position for awhile?”  
  
Dean raised an eyebrow. “Would I notice the difference?”  
  
“Probably not.” Sam snorted. “You people are so dense; I have trouble understanding how you communicate at all, most days.”  
  
“The world is a big place, Sam. We can’t all be wolves.”  
  
“More’s the pity.” Sam flipped the switch and climbed into bed beside Dean.  
  
Dean shifted over a bit to give him more room. “What would you eat if everyone was a wolf?”  
  
“The stupid ones,” Sam grumbled, “who ditch their partners and wander off into death traps.”  
  
Dean found one of Sam’s hands and squeezed it again, a reminder of his promise. “How long am I going to have to hear about this?”  
  
“At least until the cast is off,” Sam growled, curling protectively close.  
  
Dean rolled his eyes in the darkness.  
  
“We need to talk about the psychic stuff, Sam,” he mumbled some time later, on the edge of falling asleep. “I need to know how far it goes, what it is. That kind of crap.”  
  
Sam snuffled into his hair. “I don’t know any more than what you do. It just happens. Some pairings have it, some don’t. We bonded so young, but I saw _nothing_ for all the years you were away. And later, after we were all grown and you went away again, there was still nothing. I didn’t think we had it; they don’t talk about it much and I had no reason to ask.”  
  
“So is it only supposed to be a dream thing? Maybe dreams and when someone is in danger?’  
  
He felt Sam’s shrug.  
  
“We’ll have to try practicing,” Dean mused, “see if we can do it anytime. Be an awesome skill in the field.”  
  
“I thought you would be more freaked out than this.”  
  
“I think I’ve used up all the freak-outs I have at the moment. I’m burning calm acceptance for now. But I might manage to find some if you start rummaging through my mind like it’s a sock drawer.”  
  
“Mmmmmmm.”  
  
“We’re never going to get all of the stains off these sheets.”  
  
“S’kay,” Sam mumbled. “Bobby told me he’s going to burn them when we leave anyways.”  
  
Dean smiled against Sam’s shoulder and closed his eyes again. Sleep embraced him almost immediately.

  
  
**Chapter Eleven**

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird,  
and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours,  
we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."  
                                                                        ~Dr. Seuss

  
Bobby waved them off about a week later.  
  
Two weeks into healing, Dean was still limping and swearing, but the worst of the swelling had gone down and there was no reason he couldn’t lay around and bitch in a tent as easily as on Bobby’s couch. Sam had made reservations for a campsite with car access and was almost giddy with excitement. Dean was decidedly less enthusiastic, but Sam’s happiness wasn’t even remotely dimmed by the grumbling. He would have Dean, and the forest, exactly where he wanted them. The world was a beautiful place.  
  
Sam was loading the car when Bobby had one last talk with Dean.  
  
“You guys gonna be okay?”  
  
“Yeah. I stole a bunch of your magazines and there’s a headlamp in the trunk.”  
  
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Bobby growled.  
  
“We’re going to be fine.” Dean was firm. “The bad guys are dead, the Mirror is where it belongs, and all is right with the world.”  
  
Sam practically bounced past them carrying a packed cooler for the car.  
  
“Just ask Sam,” Dean added darkly. “He will tell you _allllll_ about what a wonderful day it is.”  
  
“I know you looked in the Mirror, Dean,” Bobby said bluntly.  
  
Dean’s expression didn’t change. “We’re fine, Bobby.”  
  
“A lot of other people who caught a glimpse thought they were fine too.”  
  
“Yeah, but we’re _really_ fine. It’s... exactly what you said it was. Nothing more, nothing less.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam yelled, “start hobbling over here. We have just enough time to make it before dark.”  
  
“You’re gonna let him drive?” Bobby sounded dubious.  
  
Dean’s expression darkened but he dutifully grabbed the crutches and got to his feet. “It was either that or he packed us on a bus. I think I’d rather risk a wreck.”  
  
“It’s your funeral.”  
  
“Bury us in my car.” Dean half turned so he could catch Bobby’s eyes, his expression more serious. “Thanks.”  
  
“Don’t mention it,” Bobby replied gruffly.  
  
“And next time, take the party to someone else’s place!” he added, as Sam helped an unhappy Dean into the passenger side of the Impala.  
  
Sam waved cheerfully from the driver’s side window as they turned down the dirt driveway and passed out of sight.  
  
Bobby shook his head and went inside. “Idjits.”

  


**END**

****

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: http://glasslogic.livejournal.com/23251.html


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